•  • 

.^••-,:  i 

.-      -•---:..-•  -.•;., 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


PRESENTED  BY 

PROF.  CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 
MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


THE 

CULTURE    AND    DISEASES 
THE    PEACH; 

A  COMPLETE  TREATISE 

FOR  THB 

USE  OF   PEACH   GROWERS  AND  GARDENERS, 

OK 

PENNSYLVANIA, 

AND   AT.L 

DISTRICTS  AFFECTED  BY  THE   "YELLOWS," 

AND 

OTHER  DISEASES  OF  THE  TREE. 


BY  JOHN  RUTTER, 

West  Chester,~PaT 

Ex-President  of  the  Chester  County  Horticultural  Society  and 

Honorary  Member  of  the  Pennsylvania 

Fruit  Growers'  Society. 


HAHRISBUKG,  PA.: 

EVERY  SATURDAY  NIGHT  OFFICE, 

1880. 


Entered,  according  to  act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1880,  by 

JOHN  RUTTER, 
in  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress  at  Washington. 


S2337/ 


INTRODUCTORY. 


A  desire  to  see  the  great  State  of  "Pennsyl- 
vania, and  more  especially  its  rich  and  fertile 
districts  east  of  the  mountains,  engaged  in  the 
cultivation  of  the  Peach,  and  supplying  the 
markets  of  its  cities  with  this  luscious  fruit, 
instead  of  spending  thousands  of  dollars  an- 
nually for  the  benefit  of  the  peach  growers  of 
Delaware  and  Maryland,  is  the  impulse  that 
prompted  me  to  write  the  following  pages,  and 
to  present  them  to  the  public. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  Peach  would  be 
extensively  cultivated  in  this  State,  did  not  the 
fatal  disease,  the  Yellows,  prevent  its  success- 
ful cultivation.  My  long  experience  in  the  cul- 
tivation of  this  fruit  gives  me  the  passport  to  a 
correct  knowledge  of  this  disease,  and  how  to 


IV 


prevent  it.  In  these  pages  will  be  found  the 
results  of  my  experience,  and  the  description 
of  successful  manipulation  of  the  peach  orchard 
to  combat  its  diseases. 

If  these  instructions  are  followed  out  by  our 
farmers  and  fruit  growers  generally,  the  day  is 
not  far  distant  when  Eastern  Pennsylvania  will 
supply  the  markets  of  Philadelphia  and  New 
York  with  better  peaches  than  now  come  from 
the  celebrated  peach  districts  of  Delaware  and 
Maryland. 

JOHN  RUTTER. 

WEST  CHESTER,  March  1,  1880. 


THE  PEACH  AND  ITS  DISEASES. 


IT  is  universally  admitted  that  the  Peach  is 
regarded  as  the  most  delicious,  popular,  and  highly 
esteemed  of  all  the  summer  and  fall  fruits  grown 
within  the  limits  of  our  temporate  climate  and  par- 
ticularly within  the  Middle  States.  It  was  intnr 
duced  by  the  early  settlers  of  the  country  at  different 
places  and  at  different  periods,  from  1650  to  16SO? 
taking  rank  with  the  apple  and  the  small  fruits 
around  the  rustic  habitations,  adding  its  rich  tribute 
to  the  scanty  luxuries  of  these  heroic  pioneers  in 
our  American  forests.  Keeping  pace  with  the  suc- 
cessive settlements  of  the  country,  by  the  hardy 
adventurers  of  almost  every  nation,  it  became  in- 
dispensible  to  the  garden  and  orchard — these  Edens 
of  their  primitive  homes.  The  tree  grew  in  the 
newly  upturned  virgin  soil  of  the  country  in  great 
vigor  and  fruitfulness,  from  Massachusetts  to  the 
extreme  settlements  in  the  South,  giving  the  most 
unmistakable  evidence  of  its  adaptability  to  the  soil 
and  climateof  its  new  location,  reveling  for  the  time 
under  the  shelter  and  protection  of  the  forests,  and 


6  THE  PEACH 

free  from  all  insect  depredations  or  injury  from 
disease,  and  rivaling  in  growth  and  productiveness 
the  famed  orchards  of  Persia  and  China,  the  reputed 
countries  of  its  birth. 

Such  is  its  great  excellence  from  improved  va- 
rieties now  cultivated  and  known  to  the  country  ? 
and  as  exposed  in  our  markets  daily  through  the 
season  of  its  maturity,  that  we  can  scarcely  be 
charged  with  undue  enthusiasm  in  rating  the  su- 
perior qualities  of  the  Peach — its  lusciousness  of 
taste  and  great  beauty  of  color — by  uniting  in  our 
praise  with  the  old  Pomologists  "that  it  excels  all 
other  fruits  of  the  earth,"  It  has  been  aptly  said 
that  no  fruit  this  side  of  Paradise  has  ever  rivaled 
it,  and  as  a  wholesome  fruit  of  the  season  it  has  the 
highest  character  from  the  medical  profession.  Half 
a  century  ago  the  expression  was  often  quoted  "  that 
a  basket  of  healthy  ripe  Peaches  in  the  market  was 
worth  more  than  a  pound  of  calomel  in  the  shop, 
and  that  it  robbed  the  doctor  of  a  patient  and  the 
druggist  of  a  prescription."  In  its  adaptability  to 
the  soil  and  climate  of  the  United  States  the  Peach 
is  assigned  the  widest  range  of  any  other  fruit,  and 
such  is  the  estimation  in  which  it  is  everywhere 
held,  that  even  in  countries  beyond  its  climatic  limits 
of  open  culture,  it  finds  a  place  in  the  orchard  house 
forced  under  glass  or  on  the  trellis  against  a  south. 
ern  wall,  under -the  care  and  skill  of  the  expert 
gardener,  and  is  considered  the  greatest  luxury  of  the 
season.  So  well  is  this  fruit  known  throughout  the 


AND  ITS  DISEASE.  7 

country  and  especially  in  Pennsylvania,  that  it 
would  be  but  a  repetition  of  what  we  aiready  know 
to  go  into  any  detail  of  its  history,  other  than  in 
connection  with  the  injuries  and  diseases  to  which 
it  is  subject,  and  particularly  as  affecting  us  here 
in  Pennsylvania,  within  reach  of  the  markets  of 
Philadelphia  and  New  York.  In  this  connection  I 
use  the  words  INJURIES  and  DISEASES,  as  it  is  gen* 
erally  believed  that  the  paach  tree  is  specially  sub" 
ject  to  injuries  and  diseases  over  and  above  all  other 
varieties  of  fruit  trees  common  to  our  gardens  and 
orchards.  In  removing  this  delusion  I  am  pleased 
to  be  able  to  say — that  from  my  experience  in  the 
cultivation  of  this  fruit  in  Pennsylvania,  Delaware 
and  Maryland,  which  has  been  quite  extensive,  and 
from  my  personal  observations  over  a  region  ex- 
tending from  New  York  to  Florida — which  obser- 
vations have  neither  been  casual  nor  limited  in  all 
this  range  of  a  varied  soil  and  climate — I  have  seen 
and  learned  of  but  one  disease  destructive  to  the 
tree,  and  that  is  the  specific  disease  termed  the 
"yellows,"  and  one  as  fatal  to  the  Peach  as  yellow 
fever  is  to  the  human  race,  calling  for  a  specific 
remedy  or  preventative  to  arrest  its  progress.  All 
other  causes  affecting  the  peach  tree  are  but  slightly 
injurious  and  of  but  little  account,  and  are  found 
prevailing  as  well  in  what  is  considered  the  healthy 
peach  districts  in  Southern  Maryland,  and  further 
south,  where  the  tree  now  stands  in  thrifty  growth 
and  productiveness,  having  attained  a  size  of  from 


8  THE   PEACH 

one  to  two  feet  and  over  in  diameter,  and  an  age 
of  from  fifty  to  one  hundred  years.  The  injuries 
caused  by  the  Peach  borer  and  small  insects  that 
infest  the  bark  and  the  leaves  are  mythical  in  com- 
parison with  the  "  yellows,"  a  disease  from  which 
it  has  been  said  none  survive.  The  borer  for  a  long 
time  was  considered  the  active  agent  in  causing  the 
yellows.  This  opinion  however  has  been  long  since 
exploded.  His  sharp  cuttin  g  mandibles  are  as  clear 
of  communicating  disease  as  the  clean  steel  of  the 
sharp  instrument  that  follows  him  witli  unerring 
fatality  to  his  rather  insecure  quarters  at  the  root  of 
the  tree.  The  borer-has  been  long  enough  the  scape 
goat  for  the  true  "  murderer,"  and  although  he  is 
a  most  audacious  sneak  thief  to  the  peach  orchard, 
he  carries  no  contagion  or  infection  with  him  in  his 
depredations  in  supplying  his  wants  and  gratifying 
his  appetite.  lie  makes  no  effort  to  escape  our- 
vigilance,  but  is  always  found  at  the  scene  of  his 
depredations,  and  is  as  easily  captured  in  Pennsyl- 
vania as  in  the  great  peach  centres  in  Delaware  and 
Maryland,  the  fields  of  his  greatest  success.  In 
healthy  and  unhealthy  districts  as  well  as  in  healthy 
and  unhealthy  trees  the  borer  is  found  and  no  place 
escapes  him.  He  has  no  East,  no  West,  no  North 
no  South — he  is  the  autocrat  of  his  empire  eating 
out  the  substance  of  his  people. 

We  will  here  for  the  present  knowing  his  haunts 
and  how  to  counteract  and  prevent  his  depredations 
leave  him  and  turn  our  attention  to  the  greater  evil 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  9 

which  prevails  in  the  Eastern,  Western  and  North- 
ern States,  and  see  what  the  scientific  detectives 
have  done  and  are  now  doing  to  discover  the  cause 
of  the  great  ravages  he  has  made  in  the  peach 
orchard. 

In  placing  this  enemy  in  the  category  of  those 
diseases  which  have  been  and  continue  to  be  so  de- 
liant  to  the  advances  of  scientific  investigation,  let 
us  still  apply  a  due  portion  of  attention  in  this  di- 
rection in  our  comparison  of  the  ravages  of  diseases 
that  are  counterpart  to  this  one  in  animal  life;  such 
fjr  example,  as  the  pleuro-pneumonia  in  cattle, 
trichina  in  pork,  rot  and  scab  in  sheep,  rabies  in 
that  intolerable  nuisance  the  dog,  pleurisy  and  the 
hundred  diseases  the  horse  is  subject  to,  and  all  the 
complicated  ills  of  the  human  system  where  so 
many  malign  causes  are  constantly  at  work,  baffling 
ages  of  professional  research,  and  out  of  it  all  there 
come  to  us  only  palliatives  and  seldom  any  specific 
cures  as  a  grand  result  in  discovery. 

Our  Pomological  writers  in  succession  for  the  last 
half  century,  have  gravely  informed  us  that  the 
Peach  tree  is  short-lived  in  the  North — a  fact  of 
which  we  all  have  been  fully  aware  under  its  treat- 
ment with  only  a  few  exceptions  against  the  pro- 
verbial rule,  and  our  memory  fails  to  carry  us  back 
to  a  different  state  of  affairs.  In  the  South  however 
we  find  the  reverse;  and  such  too  was  the  case  in 
the  North,  for  a  century  and  more,  after  the  intro- 
duction of  the  Peach  into  this  country,  and  even 


10  THE   PEACH 

•-now  in  healthy  districts  it  grows  to  an  old  age,  re- 
gaining its  thriftiness  for  fifty  and  a  hundred  years, 
thus  virtually  giving  it  the  character  of  a  longlived 
tree.  These  facts  alone  fully  demonstrate  that  the 
cause  producing  the  change  to  a  dwarfed  size  and 
short  life,  has  not  arisen  from  any  want  of  adapta- 
bility in  soil  and  climate,  but  is  occasioned  by  dis- 
ease to  which  we  shall  presently  more  fully  refer. 
In  order  to  reach  our  present  object — which  is  to 
show  that  peaches  in  Pennsylvania  and  in  t-he 
Middle  States  can  be  grown  in  orchard  culture,  as  a 
branch  of  farm  industry  with  greater  success  and 
to  more  profit  to  the  producer,  than  they  are  now 
raised  in  Maryland  and  Delaware,  or  indeed  in  any 
of  the  peach  districts  farther  South  under  a  system 
of  proper  culture,!  may  here  say  this  has  been  done 
for  years  and  fairly  tested  with  the  same  careful 
culture  as  in  the  peach  districts  of  Southern  Mary- 
land. In  showing  this  state  of  facts  we  will  first 
present  the  early  records  reaching  back  to  the  first 
appearance  of  the  fatal  disease,  in  as  brief  a  manner 
as  possible  to  be  intelligent.  To  do  this,  we  must 
trace  its  progress  and  the  course  of  examinations 
which  have  been  made  looking  to  the  cause  and  the 
results  obtained  therefrom. 

It  is  said  that  this  disease — the  yellows — made 
its  first  appearance  in  the  neighborhood  of  Phila- 
delphia. As  to  the  truth  of  this  declaration,  the 
evidence  is  not  at  all  clear.  The  first  public  notice 
on  the  subject  we  find  in  a  communication  made  by 


AND   ITS    DISEASE.  11 

Judge  Richard  Peters,  President  of  the  Philadelphia 
Agricultural  Society,  dated  February  11, 1806,  and 
published  in  the  transactions  of  that  Society — 
which  was  instituted  in  1785.  From  this  carefully 
prepared  article,  it  is  evident  that  the  Judge  took  a 
deep  interest  in  the  growth  and  cultivation  of  the 
Peach.  He  states  "  I  know  not  in  the  catalogue  of 
our  trees,  one  more  desirable,  nor  one  more  subject 
to  mortification,  decay  and  disease  than  the  Peach. 
I  have  cultivated  it  from  my  early  youth — about 
fifty  years  ago  on  the  farm  on  which  I  now  reside, 
my  father  had  large  peach  orchards  which  yielded 
abundantly  and  they  so  continued  for  years,  pro- 
ducing plentiful  crops  with  but  little  attention — 
then  the  trees  began  nearly  at  once  to  sicken  and 
finally  perish.  I  have  often  found  sick  trees  to  in- 
fect those  in  vigor  near  them  by  some  morbid 
effluvia."  In  this  communication,  Judge  Peters 
refers  to  a  plantation  of  700  to  800  trees  of  natural 
fruit,  which  he  calls  an  extensive  orchard,  and  plant- 
ed by  Mr.  Edward  Heston,  (near  Hestonville,West 
Philadelphia,  and  near  what  is  known  as  the  Cen- 
tennial grounds)  on  rather  flat  clay  land,  and  states 
"  that  Mr.  Heston  begins  to  suffer  by  the  disease  I 
call  yellows."  Following  up  his  observations  in 
the  progress  of  this  disease  in  Mr.  Heston's  orchard  ? 
in  September,  1807,  he  writes,  "  as  I  predicted  the 
yellows  are  seen  making  destructive  ravages  in  Mr- 
Heston's  peach  plantation.  I  have  lost  a  great  pro- 
portion of  my  trees  by  the  same  malady.  This  year 


12  THE    PEACH 

some  of  them  were  young  and  vigorous  but  we  have 
had  two  successive  rainy  seasons,  and  I  do  not  re- 
collect ever  to  have  seen  more  general  destruction 
among  peach  trees  through  the  whole  of  the 
country.  It  seems  evident  that  excessive  moisture 
is  one  if  not  the  primary  cause  of  this  irresistible 
disease." 

I  may  here  remark  that  my  observations  fully 
confirm  this  statement  that  wet  seasons  do  favor 
the  production  of  disease.  The  summer  of  1878 
was  a  wet  season  at  "West  Chester,  Pa.,  and  in  the 
immediate  neighborhood,  and  I  observed  that  the 
yellows  was  more  than  usually  destructive  among 
peach  trees  that  had  been  cultivated  in  the  usual 
careless  way,  or  rather  not  cultivated  at  all. 

Again,  in  Nov.  1807,  Judge  Peters,  commenting 
on  a  letter  he  had  received  from  Dr.  Tilton,  of  Wil- 
mington, Delaware,  says,  "  I  still  think  that  the 
disease  so  generally  fatal  (more  so  this  year  than 
any  other  in  my  memory,)  called  the  yellows  is  at- 
mospheric. I  have  always  considered  mildew  and 
blight  as  originating  in  atmospheric  taint,  yet  Sir 
Joseph  Banks  asserts  that  parasitical  fungi,  and 
others  affirm,  that  insects  are  the  causes.  I  believe 
with  much  deference  to  authority  so  respectable, 
that  fungi  originate  and  insects  breed  in  morbid 
juices  and  extravasated  sap  after  the  plant  has  be. 
come  sickly" 

In  his  day  Sir  Joseph  Banks  was  one  of  the  most 
astute  and  accomplished  naturalists  England  pos 


AND    ITS    DISEASE.  13 

sessed,  and  he  had  given  his  attention  to  the  inves- 
tigation of  the  injurious  parasite  fungi  of  the  king- 
dom, and  he  likewise  presented  a  learned  report  on 
the  causes  of  blight,  mildew  and  rust  in  grain,  and 
the  discoveries  he  then  made  have  been  fully  con- 
firmed by  subsequent  scientific  investigation. — 
Parasitic  fungi  are  a  cause  of  injury  and  fina 
destruction  to  healthy  vegetable  matter,  as  much 
so  as  the  depredations  made  by  insects,  and  as  to 
Judge  Peters  "  atmospheric  taint,"  being  a  cause,  it 
is  about  as  lucid  as  the  opinions  of  some  of  the  old 
vegetable  Physiologists,  in  assigning  vitiated  and 
extravasated  sap  as  the  direct  cause  of  disease.  The 
question  behind.it  all  would  be  what  caused  the 
taint ;  and  what  caused  the  extravasation  of  the 
sap — the  hearts  blood  of  the  vegetable  system  ?  In 
the  first  place  it  might  have  been  from  a  floating 
parasite  fungi  spore,  or  an  infusoria  in  the  atmos- 
phere, but  in  that  case  "tainted"  atmosphere  would 
be  a  misnomer  ;  and  in  the  second  place  various 
causes  might  be  at  work  through  infusoria  or  fungi 
to  produce  extravasated  sap  and  obstruct  the  natu- 
ral channels  of  circulation.  Sir  Joseph  Banks  was 
correct  in  his  fungi  theory,  as  was  proven  by  his 
and  other  practical  tests — a  discovery  conferring  no 
doubt  lasting  advantages  to  the  grain  growing  inter- 
ests of  the  kingdom  of  Great  Britain.  The  tree  or 
the  plant,  to  continue  its  growth  and  development 
requires  a  free  and  unobstructed  circulation  of  pure 


14  THE   PEACH 

sap,  conveying  the  pabulum  of  life  suitable  to  its 
taste  and  physical  constitution. 

Dr.  Tilton,  of  Wilmington,  Delaware,  in  his  cor- 
respondence with  Judge  Peters,  Nov.  6,  1807,  wrote 
as  follows,  "  the  disease  and  early  death  of  our  Peach 
trees  is  a  fertile  source  of  observation,  and  that  in 
all  the  diseases  of  the  Peach  I  have  examined,  it 
appears  to  me  that  insects  do  the  mischief.  The 
curling  of  the  leaf,  the  boring  of  the  bark,  the  de- 
struction of  the  root,  the  premature  ripening  of  the 
fruit,  all  proceed  from  insects,  and  even  the  sickly 
appearance  of  the  tree  called  yellows  is  attributed 
to  insects  by  a  late  writer  in  our  newspaper !  In 
my  jaunt  in  Maryland,  I  was  attentive  to  the  sub- 
ject of  your  letter.  I*found  that  peach  trees  were 
generally  long  lived,  healthy  and  bore  well.  In 
Edward  Lloyd's  garden,  I  observed  some  of  the  trees 
fifteen  to  eighteen  inches  in  diameter  and  perfectly 
healthy." 

From  these  publications  it  seems  that  the  exper- 
iments by  Peters,  and  others,  in  the  application  of 
supposed  cures  and  remedies  were  applied  empiri- 
cally, and  opinions  were  expressed  based  only  on 
slight  indications,  and  hence  errors  and  failures  were 
the  result.  These  gentlemen  and  others  connected 
with  their  learned  society,  standing  then  as  they  did 
the  living  fingerposts,  directing  the  course  in  which 
public  sentiment  and  public  action  should  travel, 
rather  discouraged  than  otherwise,  perseverance  of 
investigation  into  the  causes  of  the  troubles  in 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  15 

peach  growing,  by  advising  farmers  to  let  hazard- 
ous cultivation  be  collateral  and  subordinate,  and 
apply  their  main  strength  to  other  employment 
more  certain  and  equally  profitable;  concluding 
that  peach  trees  could  not  be  profitably  cultivated 
on  an  extensive  scale  in  that  part  of  the  country, 
that  a  succession  of  Peaches  might  be  kept  up  for 
domestic  use  by  "  planting  a  few  trees  every  year," 
and  thus  a  death  blow  was  given  to  general  peach 
growing  on  a  large  scale,  and  it  has  only  since  been 
encouraged  by  the  direction  to  plant  a  few  Peach 
trees  about  the  garden  and  buildings,  and  this  has 
been  observed  in  Eastern  Pennsylvania  to  the  pres- 
ent day,  as  one  of  the  oracular  sayings  of  the  savants 
of  that  period.  This  pretext  for  the  encouragement 
of  our  lazy  indulgences  without  further  effort  to 
master  the  difficulties  that  beset  us,  and  giving  our 
time  and  attention  to  other  departments  of  farming 
requiring  less  thought — giving  us  less  profit  and 
more  labor — is  the  legacy  left  us  by  these  writers 
and  in  our  farming  interests  we  are  consoled  with 
the  dangerous  doctrine  that  in  our  economic  and 
domestic  prosperity  many  things  within  our  capa- 
city to  acquire  by  our  own  industry  on  the  farms 
are  cheaper  to  buy  than  to  raise,  thereby  reversing 
the  old  maxim  "  that  a  penny  saved  is  a  penny 
earned,"  and  just  here  for  the  want  of  a  little  more 
brain,  a  little  labor,  and  another  step  higher  up  the 
ladder  of  energy,  Pennsylvania  is  not  only  hand 
ing  over  annually,  pennies,  but  millions  of  gold  to 


16  THE   PEACH 

her  next  neighbors,  Delaware  and  Maryland,  for 
products  which  she  has  the  ability  to  raise  in  her 
soil  and  under  almost  the  same  climate,  with  the 
advantage  of  closer  proximity  to  the  great  marts 
of  consumption.  In  three  or  four  short  years  with 
a  proper  application  of  common  industry  to  this 
branch  of  fruit  growing,  the  counties  of  Delaware 
Chester,  Lancaster,  Montgomery,  Bucks  and  Berks7 
alone  would  be  able  to  relieve  us  of  our  dependence 
on  our  neighbors  in  the  supply  of  these  luxuries  at 
least,  for  which  we  now  pay  so  dearly.  In  looking 
to  a  renewed  energy  and  a  more  improved  and  en- 
lightened home  industry  in  this  direction,  the  time 
is  not  distant  when  these  counties  will  emerge  from 
their  present  condition  in  peach  growing,  and  in- 
stead of  mourning  yearly  over  a  few  straggling, 
yellow  dying  trees  about  the  dwelling,  we  shall  see 
the  thrifty,  blooming  productive  orchard,  adding  its 
golden  fruit  to  swell  the  profits  of  the  farm,  and 
contributing  to  the  luxuries  and  comforts  of  home. 
The  Peach  now  so  shamefully  neglected  is  not  a  new 
fruit  to  Pennsylvania,  and  the  tree  is  no  stranger 
to  our  productive  soil  and  genial  climate.  It  has 
been  a  servant  and  a  good  one,  responding  faithfully 
to  our  domestic  culture  for  the  last  two  hundred 
years  wherever  cared  for,  cultivated  and  protected; 
and  often  under  our  disgraceful  neglect  its  ener- 
gies and  fruitfulness  have  only  yielded  to  the  visi- 
tation of  a  fell  disease  which  it  was  our  duty  as  well 
as  our  interest  to  endeavor  to  counteract,  as  we 


AND   ITS    DISEASE.  17 

would  the  diseases  in  our  faithful  animals  depend- 
ent upon  us  for  support  and  protection,  in  return 
for  a  short  life  of  labor  in  our  fields.  Let  us  in  this 
strain  turn  to  our  Bibles,  and  learn  again  the  price 
of  good  fruit  at  the  Creation,  as  fixed  by  the  Deity 
himself,  and  despair  not.  The  injunction  we  there 
find  is,  "dress  the  garden  and  keep  it."  Can  any 
one  expect  to  obtain  such  a  luxury  as  the  Peach  at 
a  less  price  ?  In  looking  over  that  portion  of  the 
district  of  Eastern  Pennsylvania,  extending  from 
the  mountains  to  the  Delaware  river,  we  find  but 
few  who  have  regarded  this  injunction,  while  all 
others  have  rather  followed  the  advice  of  Judge 
Peters,  "  to  plant  a  few  trees  every  year,"  and  we 
have  in  this  way  kept  up  a  kind  of  diseased  perpet 
uity  in  the  few  yellow  skeletons  which  have  or- 
namented our  habitations  and  surroundings  for 
almost  the  past  century.  Let  every  farmer  who 
has  his  own  broad  acres  to  cultivate,  and  every 
house  keeper  who  has  his  garden  to  till,  no  matter 
how  limited,  read  their  own  rebuke;  not  only  in 
their  diseased  and  sickly  trees,  but  in  the  crowded 
markets  of  their  own  city,  teeming  in  season  with 
this  delicious  product  which  their  industry  should 
have  supplied ;  and  take  wisdom  for  the  future. 
We  might  here  also  awaken  our  languid  interests 
by  reading  the  parable  of  the  vineyard,  wherein 
idleness  is  called  to  industry,  in  the  question, "Why 
stand  ye  here  all  the  day  idle  ?"  It  is  quite  evi- 
dent that  in  Chester  county,  and  it  may  be  so  in 


18  THE   PEACH 

the  adjoining  counties,  to  which  we  have  referred, 
that  peach  growing  has  increased  but  little  in  the 
past  twenty  years,  and  that  from  all  the  informa- 
tion we  have  obtained  we  have  not  advanced  until 
lately,  towards  a  settlement  of  the  cause  of  the  fell 
disease.  In  coming  down  to  a  more  recent  date  we 
find  that  it  is  the  old  story  repeated,  and  like  all 
other  ills  and  diseases,  it  keeps  pace  with  the  spread 
and  extended  settlement  of  the  country.  In  every 
direction  except  toward  the  South,  where  its  rav- 
ages have  never  extended,  do  we  hear  of  its  de- 
structive influences.  Many  of  the  Western  States? 
and  especially  those  bordering  on  the  region  of  the 
great  lakes,  as,  for  example,  Wisconsin  and  Michi- 
gan, have  gone  extensively  into  peach  growing  for 
the  purpose  of  supplying  the  markets  of  Chicago, 
and  the  other  cities  and  towns  of  the  great  North- 
west, and  all  complain  of  the  ravages  of  the  ''yel- 
lows." The  Legislature  of  Michigan  has  given  the 
peach  growers  an  act  to  prevent  the  spread  of  the 
disease,  compelling  the  eradication  of  all  trees  from 
the  orchard,  when  they  present  the  first  appearance 
of  disease.  This  plan  of  ridding  the  orchards  of 
diseased  trees,  cuts  off  its  spread  by  contagion 
which,  as  a  rule,  passes  so  rapidly  over  an  orchard 
to  the  destruction  of  the  healthy  trees,  and  is  one 
of  the  means  for  retarding  its  progress.  This  spe- 
cies of  legislation  is  similar  to  that  we  have  here 
in  Pennsylvania,  to  prevent  the  spread  of  noxious 
weeds  by  enforcing  the  destructiou  of  the  plant  be- 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  19 

fore  it  matures  its  seed,  the  one  plan  removing  the 
source  of  complaint  through  the  destruction  of  the 
seed,  and  the  other  attaining  the  same  object,  if 
fungi  is  the  cause  of  the  spread  of  the  disease. 
Some  of  our  leading  pomologists  have  from  time  to 
^ime,  indulged  in  the  notion  that  the  "  yellows  "  has 
had  its  day,  and  as  late  as  the  year  1873,  one  of  the 
most  prominent,  in  an  address,  informed  us  "that 
he  was  happy  to  say  that  the  "yellows"  is  almost 
a  thing  of  the  past,  and  in  many  sections  of  our 
State  (Pennsylvania),  where  the  scourge  held  undis- 
puted sway  but  a  few  short  years  ago,  to-day  can 
be  seen  healthy,  thriving  orchards,  and  consequent- 
ly annual  crops  of  delicious  fruit.  What  is  there 
in  the  season  just  passed  to  make  it  a  marked  epoch 
in  the  history  of  fruit  culture  ?  Is  it  not  owing  in 
a  great  measure  to  the  peculiar  temperature  and 
possible  lack  of  humidity  in  the  atmosphere  ?" 

These  apparent  cessations  and  almost  entire  dis- 
appearance of  the  disease  in  certain  districts,  for 
short  periods  of  dry  seasons  are  but  mere  tempo- 
rary lulls  in  the  ravages  of  the  disease  from  sus- 
pended infectious  malaria,  inspiring  the  hope  that 
in  a  short  time  it  would  become  one  of  the  "things 
of  the  past,"  but  a  returning  season  or  two  of  fa- 
vorable influences  for  the  propagation  of  the  dis- 
ease, and  all  hope  is  dispelled  by  its  renewed  viru- 
lence. These  appearances  were  noted  in  1807,  by 
that  noted  fruit  grower — especially  of  the  Peach — 
to  whom  I  have  already  referred,  Judge  Peters,  of 


20  THE   PEACH 

Philadelphia,  and  in  a  postscript  to  his  letter  we 
find  the  following:  "We  have  had  two  successive 
rainy  seasons,  and  I  do  not  recollect  ever  to  have 
seen  more  general  destruction  among  peach  trees 
through  the  whole  of  the  country.  It  seems  that 
excessive  moisture  is  one,  if  not  the  primary  cause, 
of  this  irresistible  disease." 

These  coincidences  of  rainy  seasons  and  the  yel- 
lows among  peach  trees  over  the  country,  I  have 
observed  for  years  as  marked  in  these  alternations 
of  weather,  favoring  the  now  general  opinion  of  the 
cause  of  the  disease  as  I  have  already  remarked. 
Thomas  Taylor,  the  microscopist  of  the  Agricul- 
tural Department,  Washington  City,  as  published 
in  the  Agricultural  Report  of  the  year  1872,  page 
169,  makes  the  following  statement,  "since  contact 
with  water  dissolves  this  form  of  Nnemosporo,  viz  : 
"  Parasitic  Fungi,"  without  destroying  the  life  of 
the  spores,  it  is  evident  that  the  action  of  rain  or 
washes  of  pure  water  will  only  tend  to  diffuse  the 
spores  over  the  body  of  the  tree  and  roots,  while 
the  application  of  solutions  of  sulphuric  acid  and 
alkalies  will  destroy  them." 

There  are  strong  confirmatory  facts  favoring  the 
theory  of  "  Fungi "  as  being  the  cause  of  disease, 
and  that  alkaline  substances,  such  as  [caustic  lime 
and  potash  are  the  proper  substances  as  curatives 
for  the  disease,  and  with  necessary  precaution  in 
the  application  of  caustic  lime,  the  destruction  of 
the  diseased  agent  is  effected  in  a  cheap  and  expe- 


AND  ITS   DISEASE.  21 

ditious  way,  or  the  same  end  is  accomplished  in  the 
application  of  ashes  to  the  entire  surface  of  the  or- 
chard. The  trees  introduced  from  the  nursery,  al- 
ready diseased,  when  such  disease  shall  appear, 
should  be  wed  out  and  replaced  by  healthy  young- 
trees,  first  renovating  the  soil  with  an  application 
of  caustic  lirne,  potash,  or  other  strong  alkaline 
substances. 

My  main  object  here  is  to  satisfy  the  agricul- 
tural interests  of  Pennsylvania  that  peaches  can  be 
grown  in  the  State  on  a  scale  commensurate  with 
the  demands  of  our  cities  and  towns,  in  orchard 
culture,  in  larger  quantities  than  they  are  now  or 
can  be  raised  in  the  most  favored  districts  of  Dela- 
ware or  Maryland,  and  can  be  sent  into  our  mar- 
kets in  better  condition  and  at  a  much  larger  profit. 
As  this  is  a  declaration  so  entirely  in  conflict  with 
the  opinions  of  our  people  in  Eastern  Pennsylva- 
nia, I  feel  myself  called  upon  to  sustain  the  asser- 
tion in  a  very  practical  way,  showing  that  what  has 
been  done  for  years  can  be  done  again  throughout 
this  and  other  States,  all  things  being  equal,  and 
the  recommendations  here  strictly  observed — re- 
commendations based  on  practical  experience  in 
peach  culture  for  thirty-five  years,  in  what  is  called 
the  diseased  peach  district  in  Pennsylvania,  and  in 
the  healthy  districts  on  the  Eastern  shore  of  Mary- 
land, cultivating  and  planting  within  that  period 
from  25,000  to  30,000  trees ;  also  an  earlier  expe- 
rience in  raising  peaches  in  the  State  of  Delaware, 


22  THE  PEACH 

but  on  a  smaller  scale.  And  I  may  here  repeat, 
that  the  accumulated  evidence  of  all  this  period  is 
fully  and  most  overwhelmingly  confirmatory  of  the 
declaration  with  which  I  set  out.  I  was  brought 
up  from  early  boyhood  in  the  apple  and  peach  or- 
chards of  Delaware,  and  took  my  first  lessons  in 
grafting  from  an  old  almanac,  and  a  knowledge  of 
inoculating  trees  under  the  instruction  of  a  good 
old  neighboring  Methodist  exhorter. 

Through  these  instrumentalities  I  became  some- 
thing of  a  pomologist  of  that  early  day — of  a  large 
country  and  small  towns — and  acquired  a  neigh- 
borhood reputation  in  the  profession,  but  in  a  short 
time  domestic  changes  took  place,  and  I  was  called 
to  other  employments,  carrying  with  me  into  Penn- 
sylvania my  taste  and  love  for  fruit  culture,  and 
particularly  for  my  early  favorite  fruit,  the  Peach. 

Some  years  after  my  location  in  West  Chester, 
Pa.,  I  made  purchase  of  a  farm  on  the  lt  Mica  Slate 
Ridge,"  some  two  and  one-half  miles  north  of  the 
town.  This  ridge  was  known  as  the  "  Barrens," 
and  the  purchase  was  what,  at  this  day,  would  be 
called  a  worn  out-farm,  but  it  was  what  I  consid- 
ered a  miserably  neglected  one.  Most  of  the  farm 
land  was  out  in  "  commons,"  and  a  range  for  road 
stock,  under  a  crop  of  briars,  and  poverty  grass. 

The  prospect  was  gloomy  enough  for  making  out 
of  it  anything  by  ordinary  farming,  unless  by  a 
heavy  out-lay  in  fertilizers,  and  the  aid  of  a  doubt- 
ful tenant.  It  occurred  to  me,  as  it  was  near  West 


AND  ITS  DISEASE.  23 

Chester,  then  a  fair  market  even  for  foreign  peaches, 
upon  which  we  were  depending,  that  it  would  be 
the  best  scheme  for  me  to  plant  this  land  in  peach 
trees,  which,  if  successful,  would  give  me  a  double 
advantage ;  first,  by  improving  the  land,  and  giving 
a  crop  of  fruit  for  the  market.  In  a  proper  routine 
of  peach  culture  yearly,  poor  or  medium  land 
greatly  improves;  plowing  down  the  weeds  and 
stuff  that  springs  up  in  thj  summer,  with  the  foli- 
age of  the  trees  in  the  fall,  is  almost  equal  to  a 
light  coat  of  manure.  Having  fully  determined  on 
this  course,  against  the  ridicule  of  some  and  the 
remonstrance  of  other  friends,  with  the  old  stereo- 
typed declaration.  u  You  can't  raise  peaches  in  Ches- 
ter county,"  backed  up  by  directing  my  attention 
to  the  hundreds  of  skeleton  trees,  dead  and  dying, 
about  the  yards  and  gardens  of  the  town,  and 
around  the  dwellings  of  the  neighborhood,  I  went 
to  work.  All  this  was  no  terror  t:>  me,  as  I  had 
seen  it  all  in  my  younger  days,  in  Upper  Dela- 
ware, and  I  had  enquired  into  the  cause  of  it.  If 
you  want  healthy  peaches,  do  not  plant  your  trees 
about  a  farm  house,  or  in  a  farm  garden,  if  it  is  an 
old  one,  unless  you  know  of  a  proper  system  of 
renovation ;  for  peach  trees  have  been  planted  there 
from  time  immemorial,  and  in  planting  young  trees, 
as  many  do  every  year  or  two,  and  on  the  very 
graves  of  a  dozen  predecessors,  all  of  whom  have 
died  in  rapid  succession  with  the  yellows,  leaving 
the  ground  filled  with  the  seeds  of  the  disease,  to 


24  THE   PEACH 

seize  on  its  new  victim,  is  in  effect  courting  failure. 
Indeed,  even  about  modern  houses,  where  but  few 
trees  have  been  planted,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 
where  a  new  tree  is  introduced,  you  will  find  two 
or  three  in  the  neighborhood  perhaps  in  the  last 
stages  of  disease,  and  through  their  poisonous  con- 
tagion, or  sporadic  infection,  if  left  in  the  ground, 
they  will  inoculate  your  young  trees  with  disease 
the  first  season.  To  renovate  the  soil  we  must  use 
caustic  or  quick  lime,  wood  ashes,  guano,  poudrette 
or  other  alkalies,  in  sufficient  quantity  to  destroy 
or  neutralize  the  active  agent  in  the  soil,  ready  at 
all  times  to  commit  its  ravages  on  the  young  trees 
— its  natural  food — and  with  this  precaution,  all 
trees  affected  by  the  yellows,  which,  from  my  de- 
scription under  the  proper  heading,  may  be  recog- 
nized, must  be  removed,  body  and  branch,  and 
the  earth  renovated  before  replacing  it  with  a  young 
tree.  In  rejecting  all  the  kind  counsels  of  my 
friends,  and  feeling  that  I  could  bear  the  jocular  re- 
marks of  others,  I  set  myself  to  work,  taking  up 
everything  that  I  could  get  my  hands  on,  touching 
the  subject  of  the  disease  of  the  tree,  the  only 
thing  that  could  interfere  to  prevent  my  success. 
From  my  schooling  in  the  orchard,  in  boyhood, 
knowing  the  routine  of  peach  growing,  in  a  rough 
way,  having  occasionally  visited  the  mammoth  or- 
chards at  Delaware  city,  and  below,  I  had  but  one 
point  in  the  whole  field  of  peach  growing  to  exam- 
ine, and  that  was  to  find  a  preventative,  or  at  least  a 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  25 

palliative  for  the  yellows.  The  peach  borer,  the 
curled  leaf,  and  other  things,  in  their  feeble  efforts, 
were  mere  myths  compared  with  this  one  fatal 
scourge.  In  the  course  of  my  examinations,  I 
found  much  good  common  sense  and  a  good  deal 
of  nonsense  on  the  subject,  and  as  a  specimen  of 
the  latter,  I  here  give  one  or  two  little  extracts,  as 
they  are  from  the  brain  of  a  Professor  of  Agricul- 
ture, Horticulture  and  Botany,  in  1819:  "There  is 
but  one  stock  proper  whereon  to  bud  peaches, 
which  is  the  muscle  plum,  all  other  stocks  are  at- 
tacked by  the  gum,  and  by  different  species  of  in- 
sects, in  particular  the  grub,  an  hexipode  magot, 
which  gets  in  between  the  cortex  and  the  albumen, 
and  prevents  the  sap  from  circulating,  and  pro- 
duces what  is  commonly  called  the  yellows." 

"If  the  trees  are  injured  with  mildeio,  dip  the 
branches  infected  in  the  liquid  and  it  will  imme- 
diately destroy  the  insect" 

u  If  your  orchards  are  troubled  with  mole  hills, 
strew  branches  of  elder  about  the  ground,  and  they 
will  soon  disappear."  "  If  you  are  troubled  with 
snakes,  plant  ash  around  your  orchard." 

The  most  sensible  articles  I  met  with  were  the 
various  letters  and  papers  of  Judge  Peters,  and  cor- 
respondence gathering  facts  in  relation  to  the  dis- 
ease, and  particularly  his  reference  to  the  investi- 
gations of  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  in  his  inquiries  into 
the  cause  of  blight,  mildew  and  rust,  which  he 
found  to  be  the  result  of  parasitic  fungi,  and  by 


26  THE   PEACH 

fair  analogy,  the  Judge  considered  it  in  connection 
with  his  inquiry  into  the  cause  of  the  yellows,  but 
he  differed  with  Sir  Joseph  in  his  correct  conclu- 
sions, that  fungi  was  the  cause  of  the  disease,  and 
not  the  effect,  and  produced  disease  in  healthy  liv- 
ing vegetable  matter.  These  conclusions,  it  seems 
to  me,  leave  no  room  for  doubt.  Knowing  that 
moss,  lichens,  fungi  and  vegetable  matter  were  de- 
stroyed by  caustic  lime  and  potash,  I  concluded 
that  a  good  coat  of  caustic  lime,  which  was  less 
expensive  than  ashes,  could  do  no  harm  to  the  trees, 
at  least  if  it  did  no  good.  So  I  ordered  fifty  bush- 
els to  the  acre  for  twenty  acres,  but  fortunately, 
through  some  mistake,  seventy-five  bushels  to  the 
acre  were  sent,  and  it  was  all  spread,  the  land  be- 
ing first  broken  up  deep,  and  well  harrowed,  and 
the  lime,  after  spreading,  harrowed  in.  The  rows 
were  struck  eighteen  by  eighteen  feet  apart,  of  the 
depth  of  the  original  plowing;  this,  at  the  inter- 
section of  the  cross-checking,  made  a  place  for  each 
tree,  only  wanting  a  little  levelling  of  the  earth  to 
receive  them.  One  thousand  trees  were  planted  in 
the  best  part  of.  the  plot — if  there  was  any  best 
part  to  it.  The  ground  in  peaches  was  planted  in 
corn,  and  the  balance  of  the  field  sown  down  in 
oats  and  clover,  arid  the  corn,  after  the  last  dress- 
ing in  the  peach  lot,  was  also  sown  down  with 
clover.  The  following  spring  all  the  field  was 
plowed  down,  and  the  balance  planted  with  peach 
trees,  with  other  lands,  making  up  5,000  trees,  and 


AND   ITS    DISEASE.  27 

all  the  land  constituting  the  twenty  acre  field  was 
planted  in  corn,  manured  in  the  hill  with  ashes, 
yard  scrapings,  &c.,  gathered  about  the  barn.  The 
other  field,  receiving  the  balance  of  the  4,000  trees, 
planted  that  spring,  was  treated  as  above  described, 
except  that  the  lime  was  reduced  to  fifty  bushels 
per  acre.  After  the  second  year  the  cropping  was 
suspended  in  the  first  twenty  acres,  but  the  most 
of  the  other  grounds  were  cropped  for  three  years, 
in  various  crops,  but  mostly  with  corn,  and  after 
this  was  discontinued,  the  ground  received  one  plow- 
ing and  harrowing  each  year  thereafter.  The 
ground  was  generally  plowed  in  the  fall,  harrowing 
mostly  in  the  spring,  and  there  was  but  little  fall- 
ing off  in  the  crops  of  corn,  in  the  second  year, 
but  in  the  third  there  was  quite  a  reduction,  as  by 
that  time  the  roots  of  the  trees  had  quite  covered 
the  ground,  interfering  with  the  crop  of  corn.  All 
of  these  trees  made  a  rapid  growth,  and  the  firs-t 
thousand  bore  a  heavy  crop  the  fourth  year  from 
planting,  the  fruit  as  fine  as  I  ever  raised  before  or 
since.  I  continued  adding  yearly  to  the  orchards 
up  to  somo  8,000  trees;  this  included  an  orchard 
in  Delaware  county,  Pa,,  occupying  a  high  piece  of 
land  of  loamy  soil,  of  strong  Gneiss  formation  and 
and  in  fine  condition.  A  strong  grass  sod  was 
turned  down,  and  the  trees  cropped  in  corn,  for 
three  successive  years,  and  treated  as  the  Chester 
county  orchards,  except  in  the  question  of  liming, 
which  was  postponed  for  the  want  of  time  at  plant- 


28  THE   PEACH 

ing,  and  was  not  put  on  till  the  following  spring. 
All  these  orchards  came  into  bearing  condition  the 
fourth  season,  bearing  fine  crops,  except  those  com- 
ing in  on  unfavorable  seasons,  from  late  frosts. 
Sometimes  the  third  season,  if  favorable,  the  young 
trees  would  make  a  light  show  of  fine  fruit.  These 
orchards  continued  to  produce  well  from  twelve  to 
fifteen  years,  glutting  the  West  Chester  market 
with  the  finest  quality  of  fruit,  and  driving  out  all 
foreign  supply  for  years ;  returning  to  rny  aston- 
ished friends,  for  their  advice  so  kindly  given,  and 
as  kindly  rejected,  the  most  substantial  evidence 
of  my  entire  success,  establishing  the  fact,  beyond 
a  doubt,  that  peaches  can  be  raised  in  Chester  and 
Delaware  counties  at  least,  and  on  a  large  scale, 
and  at  an  immense  profit  to  the  producer.  These 
orchards  more  than  paid  the  original  cost  of  the 
land,  on  each  bearing  year,  on  a  full  or  even  half 
a  crop.  One  season,  of  a  very  heavy  crop,  I  rented 
out  twenty  acres  I  had  some  two  miles  from  my 
general  orchards,  for  $850.  I  had,  at  that  time, 
some  seventy  acres  in  bearing,  and  the  balance 
marketed,  more  than  paid  the  original  cost  of  the 
land  upon  which  they  stood. 


IN  turning  to  what,  under  more  favorable  cir- 
cumstances than  the  preceding,  just  detailed,  would 
be  called  "  the  dark  side  of  the  picture,"  I  pro- 
ceed to  a  recital  of  the  difficulties  encountered  in 
the  course  of  our  management  of  the  orchards  re- 
ferred to.  I  am  most  happy  to  say  that  the  great- 
est, and  the  only  one  that  caused  the  most  anxietyr 
and  for  which  I  received  the  most  condolence,  arose 
from  the  trouble  of  disposing  of  my  large  crops  of 
peaches,  without  glutting  the  surrounding  markets,, 
to  the  reduction  of  generous  prices.  Domestic  mar- 
kets pay  better  than  those  more  distant,  and  par- 
ticularly in  cities,  where  competition  is  found  in 
inferior  fruit ;  but  I  console  myself  that  in  all  these 
gluts,  and  excesses  beyond  demand,  I  had  my  re- 
ward in  the  removal  of  the  old  notion  that  Eastern 
Pennsylvania  was  not  adapted  to  peach  growing. 
From  some  cause  or  other  that  old  scourge,  the 
"yellows,"  was  not  so  formidable  an  enemy  as  I 
had  expected  to  have  met,  considering  the  remon- 
strances and  persistent  advice  which  my  friends 
and  neighbors  had  volunteered,  and  although  this 
advice,  so  often  rejected,  may  have  had  its  impres- 


30  THE    PEACH 

sion,  in  the  truthfulness  of  the  adage,  "  that  to  be 
forewarned  is  to  be  forearmed,"  and  that  in  these 
repeated  forewarnings  I  had  forearmed  myself  with 
the  requisite  instruments  to  successfully  repel  the 
assaults  of  the  enemy,  and  to  this  we  are,  in  an  in- 
direct way,  indebted  for  the  lights  and  shadows  on 
the  reversed  side  of  this  picture.  The  trees  planted 
in  the  orchard  were  principally  obtained  from  two  or 
three  New  Jersey  nurseries;  one  lot  of  which  came 
from  the  interior  of  the  State,  and  of  a  variety  now 
common  to  our  orchards,  and  of  first  quality  in 
size  and  beauty — the  Crawfords  Late — and  was 
grown  in  a  well  conducted  nursery,  but  in  a  badly 
diseased  district.  I  was  informed  by  the  nursery- 
man himself  that  the  infection  of  the  disease  was 
so  great,  through  the  neighborhood,  that  he  could 
scarcely  raise  sufficient  for  home  use.  At  the  same 
time,  and  for  years  before,  be  had  been  raising  and 
inoculating  nursery  trees,  and  disposing  of  them 
largely  to  the  peach  growers  in  Delaware,  Mary- 
land, and  elsewhere  every  year.  This  small  lot  of 
trees — not  over  500,  perhaps — gave  me  for  several 
seasons  more  close  inspection  in  detecting  and  weed- 
ing out  diseased  trees  than  all  the  rest  of  the  or- 
chards I  possessed.  I  entertain  no  doubt,  whatever, 
that  the  large  percentage — which  was  not  less  than 
one-third  to  one-half  of  the  trees — became  diseased 
in  the  nursery,  from  a  general  infection,  or  in  bud- 
ding, trimming,  or  from  some  other  local  cause.  I 
watched  them  closely,  and  on  the  first  symptoms  of 


AND   ITS    DISEASE.  31 

the  disease,  as  it  appeared,  the  tree  was  removed, 
u  root  and  branch,"  at  once,  to  prevent  any  spread 
from  contagion.  I  may  remark,  just  here,  and 
and  most  emphatically,  that  "at  once"  is  the  time 
to  be  observed  in  the  removal  of  the  diseased  tree 
— suffering  no  delay  to  ripen  up  the  approaching 
promising  crop — and  on  the  appearance  of  but  a 
single  specimen  of  immature  fruit  eradicate  the 
whole  tree ;  manifesting  no  sympathy,  nor  itching 
palm,  to  be  relieved  by  a  gold  dollar  or  two  in  pros- 
pect of  the  crop  ;  and  no  penny-wise  and  pound- 
foolish  system  of  economy  to  be  indulged  in ;  but 
strike  at  once  at  the  root  of  the  evil,  and  save  your- 
self, from,  perhaps,  a  tenfold  sacrifice. 

Returning  to  the  subject  of  the  diseased  lot  of  trees, 
spoken  of  above,  in  the  course  of  a  couple  of  years 
the  disease  ceased,  and  the  balance  remained 
healthy,  requiring  no  further  attention  than  the 
ordinary  culture,  and  so  continued,  producing 
heavy  crops,  in  years  of  bearing,  with  the  rest  of 
the  orchard.  The  strongest  evidence  that  this  lot 
of  trees  became  diseased  in  the  nursery  was  the 
fact,  that  the  rest  of  this  orchard,  and  the  others, 
planted  mostly  with  trees  from  entirely  a  different 
section,  exhibited  no  such  appearance  of  disease, 
but  only  occasionally,  here  and  there,  one  or  two 
over  a  field  of  some  twenty  or  twenty-five  acres, 
continuing  thus  for  perhaps  some  two  or  three 
years,  but  altogether  outside  of  the  lot  of  di  scased 
trees  above  referred  to.  I  do  not  think  that  1  lost 


32  THE   PEACH 

at  any  time  in  a  series  of  years,  over  three  percent, 
by  diseased  trees,  and  this,  we  can  readily  count 
upon,  as  diseased  trees  from  the  nursery,  not  only 
from  New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania,  but  from  all 
nurseries  in  badly  diseased  districts.  Assuming 
that  fungi  is  the  cause  of  "yellows,"  of  which  I 
think  there  is  no  doubt,  and  what  we  call  diseased 
infections,  spread  by  contact,  budding,  trimming, 
or  in  any  other  way,  and  as  it  affects  the  roots, 
body  and  limbs,  any  remedial  agent,  or  any  cura- 
tive agent  cannot  at  once,  or  in  a  year,  surrounded 
as  we  may  be  by  careless  cultivators  at  times, 
whose  only  use  is  to  cultivate  parasitic  fungi,  and 
not  peaches,  prove  effectual.  In  addition  to  this, 
we  have  to  contend  with  that  which  I  have  just  re- 
ferred to,  say  one  or  two  per  cent.,  and  for  a  time, 
perhaps  more,  of  diseased  trees  from  the  nursery, 
and  this  we  have  to  fight.  In  this  aspect  of  the 
case,  in  addition  to  lime,  potash,  guano,  poudrett, 
or  other  caustic  alkalies,  it  will  require  the  vigil- 
ant eye  of  the  peach  grower  to  detect  the  "  except- 
ionals,"  that  may  so  provokingly  find  their  way 
into  the  orchard,  and  to  nip  them  in  the  bud.  The 
parasitic  fungi  that  works  the  injury  is  microscopic, 
and  not  visible  to  the  ordinary  sight,  and  its  seed 
or  spore  is  its  infection,  and  its  touch  is  its  conta- 
gion. A  knife  inserted  through  the  bark  of  a  dis- 
eased tree  to  the  ever-moving  current  of  sap  may 
carry  with  it,  in  its  incision  into  a  healthy  tree,  a 
thousand  spores,  marking,  in  this  way,  their  new 


AND   ITS  DISEASE.  33 

victim  to  an  early  grave.  This  active  sporadic 
agent  appears  on  the  body,  branches  and  roots  of 
the  tree,  and  the  application  of  alkalies,  in  a  dilu- 
ted state,  may  be  made  use  of  as  a  wash  against 
their  further  spread.  Caustic  alkalies  will  destroy 
fungi — of  this  there  can  be  no  question.  The  peach 
grower,  commencing  right  at  the  beginning  of  his 
work,  can  have  no  trouble,  if  he  looks  through  his 
orchard  several  times  through  the  season,  and  at- 
tends to  these  "exceptional  "  intruders,  which  have 
come  uninvited  from  the  nursery,  or  on  a  sporadic 
visit  from  a  neighbor,  and  have  all  such  as  they 
appear  rooted  out,  replanting  other  young  trees  in 
their  place,  and  renovating  the  earth  well  with  any 
caustic  alkali,  as  ashes,  guano,  poudrett,  &c. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  these  experiments 
have  not  been  confined  to  a  dozen  trees  in  an  old 
garden,  but  extended  to  thousands,  in  open  field 
culture,  and  not  with  one  orchard,  but  with  half  a 
dozen,  and  not  only  in  one  location,  but  in  several ; 
one  distant  ten  miles  from  the  other,  and  in  an  ad- 
joining county,  and  in  a  different  formation  of  soil, 
and  not  planted  at  one  time,  but  at  different  times. 
These  orchards,  during  their  bearing,  for  twelve 
to  fifteen  years, were  noticed  for  their  thrifty  growth, 
health  and  productiveness,  and  as  an  evidence  of 
it,  an  extensive  nurseryman  in  Delaware,  who  raised 
large  quantities  of  inoculated  trees  for  sale  every 
season,  obtained  his  buds  from  these  orchards,  to 
keep  his  fruit  trees  for  the  market  correct  as  to  va- 


34  THE   PEACH 

riety,  and  as  a  protection  from  the  yellows,  in  tak- 
ing buds  from  known  healthy  trees.  The  usual 
course  among  nurserymen  is  to  cut  their  buds  for 
inoculation  from  the  nursery  rows  of  the  previous 
year's  growth.  As  an  introduction  to  another  field 
of  operation  in  peach  culture,  in  a  different  soil  and 
in  a  different  climate,  embracing  a  portion  of  the 
healthy  peach  districts  of  the  State  of  Maryland,  I 
may  say  that  the  Delaware  railroad,  connecting 
north  with  the  Philadelphia,  Wilmington  and  Bal- 
timore railroad,  a  mile  or  two  south  of  Wilming- 
ton, Delaware,  with  lateral  branches,  known  to  bo- 
the  great  avenues  of  trade  and  travel  through  al- 
most the  entire  length  and  breadth  of  the  penin- 
sula, embraces  the  great  peach  regions  of  Dela- 
ware and  Maryland.  This  road  terminated,  until 
after  the  close  of  the  war,  at  Salisbury,  Delaware,, 
and  at  that  time  the  peach  and  fruit  district  did  not 
extend  in  that  direction  many  miles  below  this 
point,  for  the  want  of  facilities  of  transportation  to 
the  northern  markets. 

In  1864-5  the  attention  of  our  northern  people 
began  to  be  drawn  in  that  direction,  and  particu- 
larly in  and  around  the  peach  growing  centres, 
some  dropping  below  the  terminus,  in  the  direction 
of  the  proposed  extended  route  of  the  railroadr 
where  a  pleasant,  equable  and  healthy  climate  pre- 
vailed, having  on  the  one  side  the  Atlantic  ocean, 
and  on  the  other  the  Chesapeake  Bay,  equal  of  it- 
self to  an  inland  sea.  The  country  is  in  every  way 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  35 

adapted  to  early  trucking  and  fruit  growing,  for 
the  northern  cities  of  New  York  and  Philadelphia. 
Here  fruits  and  vegetables  mature  some  three  weeks 
in  advance  of  New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania,  af- 
fording the  producer  the  advantage  of  an  early 
market  and  highly  remunerative  prices.  I  visited 
that  section  of  country  in  July,  1865,  and  found 
the  early  peaches  just  ripening,  and  coming  into 
market.  This  was  about  the  twentieth  of  the 
month.  These  early  shipments  were  then  bringing 
high  prices  in  Philadelphia  and  New  York,  and  I 
was  so  pleased  with  the  appearances  that  I  con- 
tracted for  the  purchase  of  a  farm,  near  the  rail- 
road, with  a  view  of  going  into  general  fruit  rais- 
ing. This  was  in  Somerset  county,  Maryland,, 
some  fifteen  miles  below  the  terminus,  at  Salis- 
bury. A  short  time  after  the  road  was  extended 
to  Crisfield,  on  the  bay.  In  the  fall  of  1865  and 
the  spring  of  1866  I  commenced  planting,  putting 
in  some  9,000  peach  trees,  and  about  twenty  acres 
in  pears,  strawberries  and  grape  vines.  This  sec- 
tion of  Maryland  was  and  is  entirely  exempt  from 
the  yellows.  The  disease,  in  fact,  is  not  there 
known  to  peach  growers.  The  extension  of  the 
railroad  through  to  the  bay  induced  the  extensive 
planting  of  orchards,  and  the  success  attending  my 
experiment  with  strawberries  at  once  established 
that  branch*  of  fruit  culture  as  highly  profitable, 
and  from  less  than  one  hundred  quarts  daily  ship- 
ped from  the  station  at  the  time  I  purchased,  the 


36  THE   PEACH 

shipments  increased  in  two  years  to  some  25,000 
or  30,000  quarts  per  day,  from  the  same  station. 

The  peach  tree  there  located,  having  no  enomy 
to  contend  with  but  the  borer,  the  caustic  lime 
was  not  applied  at  planting,  or  at  any  other  time. 
The  trees  were  put  in  ordinary  ground,  without 
any  fertilizer,  and  with  good  culture  produced  fine 
crops  of  peaches,  commencing  to  bear  the  third 
year  after  planting.  The  early  fruit  brought  fine 
prices  in  the  northern  cities,  but  the  later  peaches 
coming  into  competition  with  an  overstocked  mar- 
ket, from  upper  Delaware  and  Maryland,  reduced 
the  prices  to  such  a  low  figure  that  often  the  ex- 
penses for  baskets,  collecting  the  fruit,  freights, 
cartage  and  commissions  consumed  the  whole  price 
obtained,  and,  in  fact,  some  consignments  placed 
the  consignee  on  the  debtor  side  of  the  account,  and 
the  early  profits  were  partly  absorbed  in  the  later 
shipments.  To  all  this  there  is  another  serious 
drawback  to  peach  growing  in  the  South ;  for,  as 
we  proceed  from  Pennsylvania  southward,  even  to 
Florida,  the  more  precarious  is  the  peach  crop, 
from  early  blooming,  succeeded  by  heavy  frosts, 
and  such  is  my  experience  in  raising  peaches  North 
and  South,  that  I  am  fully  warranted  in  saying 
that  the  difference  in  this  respect  between  West 
Chester,  Pa.,  and  Somerset  county,  Md.,  a  distance 
of  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  in  a  due  line 
from  North  to  South — taking  a  consecutive  num- 
ber of  years,  has  been  fully  fifty  per  cent,  of  an 


AND  ITS   DISEASE.  37 

increase  in  quantity  in  favor  of  West  Chester,  and 
in  profits  there  is  no  approximate  comparison.  In 
Chester  county  the  peach  crops  were  more  valua- 
ble than  any  other  farm  crops  I  ever  raised,  except 
my  early  strawberry  crops  in  Maryland,  while  the 
peach  crops  in  Maryland  were  quite  unsatisfactory 
and  discouraging  from  the  causes  assigned.  The 
peach  is  a  perishable  fruit,  and  to  enjoy  it  to  the 
full,  its  rich,  luscious  saccharine  taste,  which  it  can 
only  acquire  at  maturity  on  the  tree,  it  must 
have  a  home  market,  a  quick  and  careful  convey- 
ance, and  then  all  these  advantages  can  be  enjoyed 
by  the  consumers  in  our  cities  and  towns  by  its  cul- 
ture in  the  adjoining  counties  of  Eastern  Pennsyl- 
vania supplying  the  demand,  instead  of  relying 
upon  fruit  wanting  in  all  these  good  qualities.  The 
time  is  at  hand  when  all  the  peaches  for  our  north- 
ern markets  will  be  grown  in  the  North,  and  every 
great  centre  of  population  will  be  supplied  with  its 
favorite  fruit  from  its  immediate  surrounding  coun- 
try. This  is  briefly  my  experience  in  peach  grow- 
ing in  the  North  and  in  the  South,  on  a  scale  about 
equal  in  number  of  trees  cultivated, and  which  I  con- 
sider a  full,  fair  and  satisfactory  test,  as  shown  in  the 
comparative  statements  made ;  but  as  the  ground  for 
the  first  year,  in  this  southern  trial  at  peach  growing 
— or  at  least  twenty  acres  of  it,  was  planted  in  straw- 
berries, and  was  with  another  orchard  of  some  ten 
acres  occupied  in  the  same  way  and  continued  for 

3 


38  THE   PEACH 

several  years,  amply  made  up  for  losses  that  were 
sustained  in  the  cultivation  of  peaches  in  Maryland. 


LOCATION  AND  SOIL. 

In  treating  upon  the  subject  of  a  location  for  a 
peach  orchard,  as  the  recommendations  are  for 
practical  and  intelligent  farmers,  it  may  be  as- 
sumed that  no  one  of  ordinary  intelligence  would 
be  likely  to  select  low  springy  or  marshy  grounds, 
as  a  suitable  location  for  his  orchard  of  peach  trees, 
or  for  fruit  of  any  kind  without  thorough  ditching 
and  draining.  With  this  hint,  the  selection  ought 
to  be  left  entirely  as  an  open  question,  to  be  de- 
cided by  the  taste  and  convenience  of  the  planter, 
as  there  is  little  left  to  choice  within  the  limits  of 
a  farm,  either  of  exposure,  quality  or  character  of 
soil  as  to  give  any  anxiety  in  a  selection.  If  the 
proposed  orchard  should  cover  the  entire  farm  the 
question  is  at  once  settled.  If  a  field  of  a  few 
acres  only,  select  high  ground  and  easy  of  access, 
and  as  near  to  the  buildings  as  may  be  convenient. 
As  to  exposure,  North,  South,  East  or  West,  taking 
a  consecutive  number  of  years,  there  would  be  but 
little  difference,  if  any,  as  to  the  protection  of  the 
fruit  from  spring  frosts.  But  I  may  say,  in  plant- 
ing on  a  small  scale,  and  where  a  choice  of  ex- 
posures offered,  I  would  unhesitatingly,  all  other 
things  being  equal,  select  a  high,  dry  northern  ex- 
posure: for  occasionally  a  season  of  early  bloom- 


AND  ITS  DISEASE.  39 

ing  occurs,  and  as  the  peach  is  more  sensitive  to  a 
few  days  of  warm  sun  on  a  southern  exposure  than 
almost  any  other  fruit,  a  northern  exposure  may 
save  the  crop,  while  on  the  south  it  may  be  par- 
tially or  entirely  destroyed ;  a  total  destruction, 
however,  is  but  seldom.  I  hare  remarked  it  but 
once  in  forty  years,  but  this  difference  may  occur 
more  frequently  on  hilly  or  mountainous  regions, 
where  the  declivities  are  great  and  the  exposures 
have  a  great  difference  of  temperature.  My  or- 
chards were  on  what  rnay  be  called  rolling  land, 
not  very  hilly,  one  field  about  equally  divided  by 
a  narrow  valley,  giving  the  orchard  on  one  side 
quite  a  northern  exposure,  and  on  the  other  about 
the  same  exposure  south.-  Occasionally  I  have  no- 
ticed the  crop  on  the  northern  exposure  the  heav- 
iest; but  one  season,  and  one  only,  the  crop  on  the 
northern  exposure  was  good,  while  the  south  was- 
almost  an  entire  failure.  My  orchards  presented 
almost  every  exposure,  but  I  have  not  noted  much 
difference  in  the  effect  of  frost,  except  the  one  I 
have  referred  to.  In  Maryland  the  land  is  gener- 
ally flat,  and  the  question  as  to  exposure  does  not 
arise,  but  even  there,  there  is  a  choice  in  location 
governed  mainly  by  the  influence  of  large  bodies 
of  water  modifying  the  temperature  and  affording 
in  their  vicinity  protection  from  late  frosts.  Such 
locations  are  greatly  preferred  by  the  peach  grower, 
for  although  he  is  south,  still  he  is  subject  to  losses 
in  his  fruit  crop  more  so  than  in  Pennsylvania,  and 


40  THE   PEACH 

the  further  South  we  proceed  the  more  precarious 
and  uncertain  is  the  peach  crop  from  the  same 
•cause.  The  peaches  raised  in  Michigan  and  Wis- 
consin, for  the  Chicago  market,  are  principally  from 
orchards  cultivated  in  the  vicinity  of  the  lakes, 
these  affording  protection  to  the  crop  from  the  se- 
vere frosts  of  spring,  and  the  trees  from  the  sever- 
ity of  winter. 


PLANTING. 

In  preparing  the  ground  for  planting,  the  soil 
should  be  deeply  broken  up,  fully  to  the  depth  re- 
quired for  setting  the  trees,  when  practicable ;  rocks 
and  stones  may  be  obstacles ;  follow  the  plow  by  a 
thorough  harrowing  of  the  ground ;  in  stiff  or  clay 
ground  sub-soiling  would  be  of  vast  advantage. 
In  laying  off  the  rows  for  planting,  which  must  be 
done  by  a  heavy  plow  and  a  good  strong  pair  of 
horses,  turning  the  ground  up  fully  to  the  depth  or 
deeper  than  the  first  plowing,  so  that  in  cross-check- 
ing, the  intersection  of  the  furrows,  as  laid  out, 
will  form  the  holes  for  planting,  only  wanting  a 
little  filling  or  leveling  with  the  shovel  to  prepare 
them  for  the  tree.  With  ground  prepared  in  this 
way,  and  with  four  men,  and  a  boy  to  drop  the 
trees,  I  have  set  out  1,000  trees  in  nine  hours.  From 
the  time  of  taking  up  the  trees  at  the  nursery  to 
the  time  of  planting  them  in  the  ground  prepared 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  41 

for  the  orchard,  there  are  three  very  important 
matters  to  be  observed,  and  in  which  there  is  as 
much  close  attention  required  as  at  any  time  in  the- 
growth  and  culture  of  the  tree :  First,  the  protec- 
tion of  the  roots  from  the  time  of  lifting  the  tree 
in  the  nursery;  second,  the  trimming  before  plant- 
ing ;  third,  planting  properly.  By  the  observance 
of  the  following  directions  at  least  a  year's  growth 
may  be  saved  to  the  expectant  fruit  grower — a 
highly  important  item  in  the  anticipation  of  an 
early  return  for  the  labor  and  capital  invested  in 
the  new  enterprise  : 

First,  the  roots  of  the  trees  from  the  time  they 
are  lifted  at  the  nursery  until  planted  in  the  ground, 
should  not  be  permitted  to  dry ;  if  transported  to 
a  distance,  they  should  be  first  packed  in  damp 
moss,  or  other  material,  to  keep  them  damp,  and  at 
once  shipped  with  despatch,  and  on  reaching  their 
destination  be  examined,  and  if  the  roots  appear 
dry,  they  should  not  be  planted  until  they  have 
been  restored  by  immersion  in  water  from  twelve- 
to  fourteen  hours  before  planting.  If  found  in 
good  condition  in  the  box,  plant  them  as  they  are 
unpacked,  and  before  the  roots  become  dry  by  ex- 
posure. The  soaking  of  the  roots  in  water  will 
restore  the  small  fibres,  and  the  trees,  if  the- 
weather  and  soil  are  favorable,  will  commence 
growth  at  once.  It  is,  I  believe,  a  pretty  fair  cal- 
culation to  make,  to  estimate  about  one-fourth 
of  the  stock  taken  from  the  nursery  as  failing  for- 


42  THE   PEACH 


want  of  the  observance  of  more  care  and  at- 
tention in  the  protection  of  the  roots  from  the  tak- 
ing up  to  the  resetting,  and  to  increase  the  propor- 
tion of  losses,  there  may  be  much  attributed  to 
carelessness  in  planting.  The  roots  are  mostly 
crowded  down  into  a  small,  deep  hole,  twice  the 
depth  it  should  be,  and  into  a  cold,  poor  sub-soil, 
filling  up  and  settling  the  earth  down  by  a  few 
shakes  of  the  tree,  and  thus  leaving  it  to  the 
chances  of  a  dry  spring,  or  a  cold  wet  one,  with  a 
dry  summer  to  follow,  which  is  no  better  for  such 
planting,  and  there  it  soon  withers  and  dies. 

Instead  of  such  treatment,  it  should  be  put  in 
the  well  pulverized  ground  at  a  moderate  depth, 
not  deeper  than  it  stood  in  the  nursery,  and  even 
not  so  deep,  if  the  sub-soil  in  which  it  is  planted  is 
stiff  clay;  and  in  all  cases,  if  the  tree  has  been  ex- 
posed and  become  dry,  soak  the  roots  in  water  be- 
fore planting,  as  above  described. 

For  small  peach  trees,  one  year  old,  and  for  ap- 
ples, two  and  three  years  old,  in  planting  them, 
every  shovelful  of  earth  should  be  pressed  by  the 
foot  firmly  to  the  roots,  with  no  shaking  up  and 
down,  and  misplacing  and  doubling  the  small  roots 
and  fibres,  under  the  old  absurd  idea,  that  practi- 
cal experience  never  originated  or  sanctioned.  The 
tree  must  be  established  in  the  first  place,  firmly 
in  the  ground,  with  the  earth  impacted  about  its 
roots,  leaving  no  room  for  mould,  or  other  fungi, 


AND  ITS  DISEASE.  43 

to  conceal  themselves  for  future  depredations,  and 
no  staking  required  to  keep  the  tree  upright. 

In  the  case  of  the  peach,  before  planting,  the  top 
should  be  divested  of  every  limb,  with  a  sharp 
pruning  knife,  and  a  portion  of  the  top  or  main 
stem,  for  some  four  to  six  inches,  leaving  the  tree 
in  appearance  a  mere  stick  above  the  surface.  The 
latent  buds,  at  the  base  of  the  limbs  cut  off,  will 
break  at  the  opening  of  the  season,  and  soon  show 
a  new  and  vigorous  growth,  which,  by  the  fall  of 
the  year,  will  be  double  the  size  of  the  old  ones, 
had  they  been  lefc,  as  is  generally  practiced  by 
amateurs.  As  a  rule,  it  is  advisable,  in  setting 
out  an  orchard  or  in  planting  a  favorite  tree,  the 
owner  should  superintend  the  planting  or  plant  him- 
self, unless  he  has  some  one  to  do  it  on  whom  he 
can  fully  rely,  knowing  more  or  as  much  as  he 
knows  himself. 

To  give  an  example  of  faithless  employees  and 
bad  planting,  some  years  ago  I  had  been  employed 
in  setting  out  some  ten  to  fifteen  acres  of  peach 
trees,  and  on  the  last  day  of  planting,  towards 
evening,  I  left  my  men  to  finish  out  with  some  fifty 
or  sixty  trees  still  to  be  planted.  This  was  on  a 
Saturday  afternoon.  The  trees  were  put  in,  and 
to  all  appearances,  as  I  observed  in  a  day  or  two 
thereafter,  they  had  been  planted  about  as  the 
others  had  been,  but  in  a  short  time  they  gave  un- 
doubted evidence  that  something  was  wrong  with 
them.  There  was  but  here  and  there  one  that 


44  THE   PEACH 

started  in  growth.     In  testing  them,  as  I  should 
have   done   when   I   first   saw  them,   and  taking 
hold  of  one  I  lifted  it  out  of  the  ground  almost 
without  an  effort,  and  the  consequence  was  that 
two-thirds  of  those  trees  died.     This  is  what  the 
men  used  to  call  "  covering  their  tracks,"  but  this 
case  was  the  last  of  their  "track  covering"  for  me. 
In  looking  into  the  old  authorities,  in  their  re- 
commendations of  soils  for  peach  growing,  we  can- 
not go  amiss  in  recommending  every  thing,  for  tak- 
ing them  altogether,  we  find  them  running  pretty 
much  in  the  same  groove,  winding  up  with  the  old 
discriminating  degrees  of  comparison  of  "  good, 
better,  best,"  the  same  as  our-  agricultural  fairs 
rank  their  fruits  on  exhibition,  from  the  luscious 
peach  to  the  useful  pumpkin,  and  I  think  from  my 
experience,  I  may  say  that  they  are  all  about  right, 
for  I  have  never  met  with  a  formation  yet  upon 
which  I  could  not  succeed  in  raising  peaches ;  even 
low,  wet,  swampy  lands  can  be  made  to  grow  them 
with  the  proper  ditching  and  draining;  but  the 
peach,  of  all  the  fruits  we  grow,  adapts  itself  to 
more  formations  and  climates  than  any  other  spe- 
cies of  fruit,  from  the  tropics  to  the  State  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, and  through  all  this  territory,  where- 
over  cultivated,  it  excels  all  other  fruits  grown,  for 
its  great  beauty,  lusciousness  and  adaptability  to 
the  taste,  not  only  of  man,  but  even  of  the  lower 
animals,  birds  and  insects.     From  my  experience, 
I  can  say  that  it  is  well  adapted  to  a  Gneiss  forma- 


AND   ITS  DISEASE.  45 

tion,  which  affords  a  deep,  rich  loam,  with  a  small 
portion  of  sand,  to  mica  slate,  which  is  composed 
of  quartz  and  mica,  and  deposits  of  talc,  to  lime- 
stone, which  is  the  carbonate  of  lime,  to  sandstone 
and  red  shale,  of  slaty  structure,  composing  the 
red  formation  passing  through  the  counties  of 
Bucks,  Montgomery  and  Chester,  in  the  State  of 
Pennsylvania,  to  light  sandy  soils;  also  to  sandy 
soils  with  a  red  clay  subsoil.  The  most  of  these, 
in  the  course  of  farm  culture,  contain  more  or  less 
rich  vegetable  mould,  and  these  formations  em- 
brace about  all  the  soils  of  a  general  geological 
character  constituting  our  farm  lands.  These  are 
all  adapted  to  peach  culture,  but  for  preference  I 
will  name  them  in  the  following  order:  Mica  slater 
gneiss,  red  shale,  limestone,  sandy  loam,  light 
sand,  sand  with  red  clay  subsoil.  This  last  I  have 
tested  in  Maryland,  and  there  it  rates  first  in  qual- 
ity for  peaches  or  any  other  fruit.  Stiff  clay  is 
considered  the  least  desirable,  but  if  well  prepared 
I  have  found  it  to  produce  excellent  crops  of  fruit. 
The  peach  does  not  require  the  richest  soil.  Del- 
aware and  Maryland  ship  thousands  of  baskets 
yearly  of  finely  grown  peaches  from  lands  below 
medium  quality  in  fertility.  In  such  soils,  and  in- 
deed in  all  soils,  the  peach  requires  yearly  culturer 
and  with  that  requisite  all  soils  will  produce  good 
peaches  in  our  temperate  climate.  The  peach  must 
make  its  bearing  wood  every  year,  and  it  requires 
cultivation  to  give  it  strong,  vigorous  growth. 


46  THE   PEACH 

With  fair  ground,  as  to  quality,  it  comes  into  bear- 
ing lightly  the  third  year,  if  favorable,  and  in  the 
fourth  year  I  have  uniformly,  if  not  cut  off  by  late 
frosts,  had  full  crops. 

My  first  planting  of  1,000  trees  produced  a  full 
crop  the  fourth  year,  and  attracted  a  great  deal  of 
interest  from  a  doubting  community  for  miles 
around,  disarming  all  the  threadbare  arguments 
that  peaches  could  not  be  raised  in  Chester  county. 
There  was  scarcely  a  year  in  which  the  crop  en- 
tirely failed,  and  a  partial  crop  often  brings  more 
than  a  full  one.  In  such  years  peaches  are  scarce, 
and  the  market  prices  are  correspondingly  higher. 
I  have  had  peaches  to  retail  in  the  Philadelphia 
market  as  high  as  seventy-five  cents  per  dozen,  di- 
rect from  my  orchards,  and  they  have  often  since 
brought  higher  prices  from  Chester  county  or- 
chards. Those  who  have  read  Edwin  Morris'  ad- 
mirable little  book,  entitled  "  Ten  Acres  Enough," 
will  recollect  that  he  tells  us  of  his  ten  old  peach 
trees  in  his  garden,  which,  after  supplying  the  fam- 
ily with  fruit  for  the  season,  realized  sixty  to  sev- 
enty dollars  for  the  surplus  fruit  sent  to  market. 


CULTIVATION. 

The  peach  of  all  the  fruits  has  for  the  last  fifty 
years  made  better  return  for  good  and  careful  cul- 
tivation and  labor  expended,  than  all  the  other 
fruits  for  market  purposes  within  reach  of  our 
northern  cities.  It  will  pay  better  than  any  crop  on 
the  farm  and  from  my  experience  nothing  I  believe 
will  pay  the  farmer  better  for  the  money  and  labor 
expended  than  its  cultivation.  The  idea  is  preva- 
lent at  the  North  that  in  the  healthy  districts  in 
Maryland  and  the  South  the  tree  springs  up  and 
without  culture  or  care  grows  up  and  flourishes  in 
health  and  productiveness  for  almost  an  indefinite 
period,  but  this  is  a  mistake,  as  the  apple  and  other 
fruits  which  we  see  there  running  into  old  age  have 
had  their  culture  in  the  rotation  of  field  crops  and 
if  standing  in  gardens  they  have  had  their  annual 
culture  incidentally  with  the  cultivation  of  the 
flowering  plants  and  vegetables.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances we  see  these  old  relics  of  a  past  century 
from  three  up  to  seven  feet  in  circumference  of 
body,  and  two  to  two  and  a  half  feet  around  in 
limbs,  still  responding  faithfully  in  good  crops  of 
fruit  almost  yearly  for  the  little  care  bestowed  upon 
them.  Many  of  them  through  a  long  life  of  sacred 


48  THE   PEACH 

associations  are  still  the  object  of  family  endear- 
ment. Why  should  not  care  and  culture  prolong 
the  life  of  the  tree  as  it  does  that  of  our  permanent 
plants  and  the  common  products  of  the  earth? 
Fruitfulness  and  longevity  require  culture  and  with- 
out it  both  vegetable  and  animal  life  would  result 
in  failure.  And  here  we  read  the  history  of  our 
failure  through  our  own  prejudices  and  lack  of  en- 
ergy years  ago  to  grow  this  delicious  fruit  in  Penn- 
sylvania during  its  almost  entire  culture  beyond 
the  limits  of  our  State  and  to  ba  taken  up  by  the 
early  pioneers  of  the  enterprise — the  citizens  of  Del- 
aware and  Maryland,  as  a  branch  of  common  indus- 
try and  one  which  has  added  its  millions  of  dollars 
to  their  agricultural  interests  in  raising  them  to 
competence  and  affluence  in  a  fifty  years  undis- 
turbed monopoly  of  our  markets.  I  do  not  speak 
of  this  in  any  feeling  of  complaint,  for  they  de- 
serve it  all  for  their  energy  and  their  labor.  Their 
foresight  stands  as  a  monument  to  their  perse- 
verance and  industry.  As  we  are  now,  with  our 
discoveries,  placed  on  an  equal  footing,  so  far  as  to 
say  that  we,  too,  can  raise  peaches  at  home,  and 
compete  with  them  in  our  own  markets,  we  may  now 
congratulate  ourselves  in  the  hope  that  the  time  is 
coming  when  we  may,  in  some  measure,  return  the 
many  obligations  to  our  friends  in  Delaware  at 
least  by  catering  to  their  tastes  in  the  markets  of 
Wilmington,  the  growing  metropolis  of  their  State. 
The  planting  of  peach  trees  will  not  interfere,  to 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  49 

any  appreciable  amount,  with  the  crop  of  corn,  by 
turning  down,  as  usual,  a  stiff  sod,  and  in  planting 
the  peach  trees  at  16x18  feet  in  the  rows  we  will 
have  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  the  acre.  Using  that 
many  hills  of  corn,  the  corn  being  planted  3x4  at, 
say  eighty  bushels  to  the  acre,  the  one.  hundred  and 
fifty  hills  occupied  by  the  trees  would  reduce  the 
product  of  the  acre  only  about  three  and  one-half 
bushels.  The  second  year  we  put  in  corn,  potatoes 
and  other  crops,  requiring  culture,  also  manuring 
in  the  hill  to  make  the  corn  crop,  and  this  second 
year's  crop  may  not  exceed  over  two-thirds  that 
of  the  first  year;  the  third  year  to  be  again  plant- 
ed with  corn,  or  such  crops  as  require  cultivation, 
and  after  the  third  year  all  cropping  to  be  sus- 
pended, but  the  field  or  orchard  thereafter  to  be 
cultivated  by  plowing  and  harrowing  it  at  least 
once  a  year,  and  oftener  in  years  of  overbearing, 
as  hereinafter  pointed  out. 


<       MANURES. 

As  the  analysis  of  the  peach,  apple  and  pear 
shows  them  so  nearly  allied  in  proportional  quan- 
tities of  the  most  important  elements  of  which  they 
are  composed,  on  the  settled  principle  that  these 
constituent  parts  indicate  the  food  upon  which  they 
exist,  it  is  evident  that  in  catering  to  their  appe- 
tites, we  may  feed  them  all  from  a  compost  formed 
of  the  same  fertilizing  elements  of  which  they  are 
mainly  composed.  Every  suitable  soil  of  medium 
fertility  contains  a  sufficient  quantity  of  the  requi- 
site elements  for  a  healthy  and  vigorous  growth  of 
the  peach ;  therefore,  but  little,  if  any,  of  the  fer- 
tilizing elements  will  be  required  at  planting,  or 
in  its  growth  up  to  bearing,  unless  as  a  precaution 
against  infection  from  that  fell  specific  disease,  the 
"yellows,"  to  which  it  is  subject  in  Pennsylvania, 
and  in  the  most  of  our  neighboring  States.  The  fol- 
lowing is  a  chemical  analysis  of  the  peach,  apple 
and  pear,  the  leading  fruits  adapted  to  our  soil  and 
climate : 

Peach — Potash,  12;  lime,  23;  phosphate  of  lime, 
21. 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  51 

Apple — Potash,  16;  lime,  19;  phosphate  of  lime, 
17. 

Pear — Potash,  22 ;  lime,  13 ;  phosphate  of  lime, 
27. 

It  will  be  observed  that  there  is  but  little  differ- 
ence in  the  chemical  composition  of  these  import- 
ant elements,  except  that  of  lime,  which,  in  the 
peach,  is  largely  developed.  All  these  ingredients 
are  familiar  to  every  tiller  of  the  soil  as  manures, 
and  are  applied  almost  yearly  to  crops.  With  this 
analysis  before  us,  we  have  no  need  of  inquiry  of 
our  neighbor  as  to  the  kind  of  manure  best  adapted 
to  the  orchard.  We  see  that  these  three  fruits  are 
composed  largely  of  potash,  lime  and  phosphate  of 
lime,  and  when  the  soil  becomes  exhausted  of  either, 
or  all,  and  the  ground  begins  to  present  the  appear- 
ance of  poverty,  as  indicated  in  the  crop,  these  ele- 
ments must  be  resupplied  to  restore  the  trees,  or 
rather  to  continue  their  growth  and  vigor. 

In  medium  soils  an  application  of  taustic  or  quick- 
lime, direct  from  the  kiln,  at  the  rate  of  fifty  bushels- 
to  the  acre,  spread  on  the  plowed  ground,  and  well 
harrowed  in,  as  for  corn,  is  about  all  the  manuring 
or  treatment  that  the  ground  requires  for  the  peacb 
tree  at  planting,  and  for  the  first  season  of  its- 
growth,  with  the  usual  attention  in  cultivating  the 
corn,  potatoes  or  other  cultivated  crops  which  may 
occupy  the  ground.  As  caustic  lime — always  cheap 
and  accessible — is  to  act  a  leading  part  in  the  new 
programme,  as  a  remedial  agent  for  the  protection 


52  THE  PEACH 

of  the  health  of  the  peach  tree  from  its  specific  dis- 
ease, in  connection  with  other  alkalies,  it  may  be 
as  well  for  us  to  look  now  somewhat  into  its  chem- 
ical and  mechanical  action  in  the  multiple  econo- 
my of  vegetable  life.  Lime  may  be  employed  to 
prevent  the  decay  of  wood  and  other  organic  sub- 
stances, or  it  may  be  employed  for  their  decompo- 
sition. We  have  the  example  of  the  first  in  ships 
and  wooden  structures  used  in  transportation  of 
burned  lime,  and  in  carts  and  wagons  conveying  it 
i'rom  the  kiln  to  the  fields.  In  these  cases  the  lime 
is  in  excess  of  the  organic  matter,  and  therefore 
the  moisture  in  the  wood  is  absorbed  by  the  lime, 
while  the  fibre  is  preserved  in  this  way  from  de- 
composition ;  but  if  these  conditions  are  reversed, 
and  the  water  and  organic  matter  are  in  excess  of 
the  newly  burned  lime,  the  wood  will  decay.  Lime 
is  employed  on  our  soils  to  reduce  or  decompose 
vegetable  elements,  to  correct  its  acidity,  or  for  the 
solution  of  silica,  or  the  decomposition  of  iron  salts 
in  the  soil. 

Lime  has  a  powerful  attraction  for  carbonic  acid, 
and  as  vegetable  matter  is  composed  largely  of  car- 
bon, it  is  readily  seen  why  decomposition  takes 
place.  Quick  or  caustic  lime,  in  fact,  soon  becomes 
the  carbonate  of  lime  by  exposure  to  the  action  of 
vegetable  matter,  and  thus  loses  its  caustic  proper- 
ties. As  an  alkali,  lime  neutralizes  acidity  in  the 
soil,  and  sweetens  it  for  the  growth  of  our  crops. 
A  good  soil  must  not  possess  any  acid  properties. 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  53 

The  remains  of  plants,  and  even  stable  manure  are 
of  an  acid  nature,  but  the  soil  usually  contains,  in 
its  mineral  constituents,  so  many  bases — lime,  pot- 
ash, soda  and  magnesia — that  these  suffice  to  neu- 
tralize the  acidity.  But  when  this  natural  supply 
is  insufficient  we  must  add  to  it,  and  lime  is  the 
cheapest  base  at  the  hands  of  the  farmer.  Lime 
has  the  property  of  setting  at  liberty  the  alkalies 
in  the  soil,  thus  favoring  the  formation  of  the  solu- 
ble silicates,  so  important  to  the  growth  of  grass 
and  grain.  The  application  of  lime  to  land  and 
the  burning  of  clay  act  on  the  same  principle  in 
decomposing  the  clay  silicates  and  liberating  their 
alkalies,  thus  favoring  solubility  and  affording  nu- 
triment to  vegetable  life.  Lime  in  its  caustic  state 
is  destructive  to  moss,  lichen,  fungi  and  all  vegeta- 
ble and  animal  matter. 

In  the  month  of  October  the  fields  of  Yorkshire, 
and  Oxfordshire,  England,  look  as  if  they  were 
covered  with  snow.  They  are  plowed  down,  and 
whole  square  miles  are  seen  whitened  over  with 
quick  lime,  which  during  the  moist  winter  months 
exercises  its  beneficial  influence  upon  the  stiff  clay 
soil  of  those  countries. 

Fruitfulness  in  cold  clay  soils  may  be  promoted 
and  made  equal  to  the  best  for  apples,  peaches  and 
other  fruits  with  a  moderate  dressing  of  quick  lime, 
about  the  quantity  such  lands  should  receive  for 
corn.     Lime  will  generally  promote  profuse  flow, 
ering  and   fruiting  of  trees   and   plants,  the  lime 


54  THE   PEACH 

salts  producing  evaporation  and  concentration  of 
the  sap.  On  the  black  vegetable  lands  of  southern 
Maryland,  with  caustic  oyster  shell  lime  of  forty 
bushels  to  the  acre,  fifty  bushels  of  corn  can  be 
produced  to  the  acre  without  using  a  shovel  full  of 
other  manure.  The  quick  lime  neutralizes  the 
acid  in  the  sour  vegetable  soil  sweetening  it  and 
changing  it  into  rich  soluble  food  for  the  crop. 
The  cultivated  plants  which  consume  very  much 
lime  in  their  development  will  naturally  lead  much 
sooner  to  an  exhaustion  of  the  lime  in  the  soil,  than 
those  plants  which  use  lime  only  moderately. 

These  brief  references  to  the  chemical  and  me- 
chanical operations  of  lime  on  the  vegetable  and 
mineral  substances  in  the  soil,  will  give  us  some 
idea  of  its  importance  in  preparing  the  soil  with 
indispensible  food  to  the  healthy  growth  of  plants 
and  trees. 

The  questions  as  to  the  time,  condition  and  quan- 
tity in  which  this  great  corrective  alkaline  agent 
should  be  applied  to  the  soil  to  obtain  the  most 
desirable  results  are  of  vast  importance  to  the  in- 
terests of  the  country.  Many  an  agricultural  crop 
has  been  lost  and  many  an  orchard  has  withered 
and  died  for  the  want  of  a  better  knowledge  of  that 
class  of  alkaline  manures  which  make  up  so  large- 
ly the  elements  of  vegetable  growth.  It  will  be 
observed  that  the  analysis  has  given  us  but  three 
of  the  ingredients,  among  the  many,  which  go  to- 
make  up  the  entire  composition  of  the  peach  and 


AND  ITS   DISEASE.  55 

the  other  fruits  named,  viz :  potash,  lime  and  phos- 
phate of  lime,  these  being  the  important  ones,  and 
the  only  ones  indeed  required  to  enable  us  to  point 
out  the  requisite  manures ;  the  others  being  sup- 
plied in  small  quantities  already  in  the  soil  or  ob- 
tained from  the  atmosphere. 

In  the  analysis  of  the  peach,  apple  and  pear 
referred  to,  potash  ranks  as  the  second  ingredient 
of  importance,  entering  largely  as  a  component 
part  of  these  three  loading  fruits.  We  will  here 
briefly  present  it  as  another  of  the  alkaline  agents 
with  quick  lime  active  in  the  destruction  of  the 
relentless  enemy  to  the  peach  tree.  In  speaking 
of  potash  we  associate  it  at  once  with  ashes  as  they 
are  well  known  to  contain  largely  of  this  element, 
and  they  are  all  at  the  command  of  the  farmer 
that  furnish  it. 

Practice  has  shown  that  Potash  exerts  a  highly 
favorable  influence  on  the  growth  of  plants.  The-, 
Chemist  informs  us  that  potash  belongs  to  the  caus- 
tic alkaline  bodies  and  in  this  form  resembles  am- 
monia, and  this  similarity  is  carried  out  in  its 
strong  action  in  forcing  vegetable  growth.  The 
virgin  soil  furnishes  us  with  potash  and  it  will 
continue  to  do  so,  for  all  kinds  of  earth  and  stone- 
contain  stores  of  it  in  an  insoluble  state,  and  a  cer- 
tain portion  is  made  soluble  from  year  to  year  by 
the  weather  and  our  plants  have  the  benefit  of  this. 
Spreading  the  fields  over  with  quick  lime  causes  an 
increased  quantity  of  potash,  since  lime  possesses* 


56  THE   PEACH 

the  power  of  decomposing  rocks  and  stones  con- 
taining it  (Stockhart  Ag.  Chem.)  Bat  if  the  soil  is 
employed  from  year  to  year  in  the  growth  of  ex- 
haustive crops,  the  salts  of  potash  must  to  some 
extent  be  given  back  in  some  form  to  prevent  the 
land  from  becoming  sterile  for  the  want  of  this  im- 
portant element  of  which  it  has  been  robbed.  An 
example  we  have  in  the  exhausted  soils  of  Virginia 
by  the  successive  crops  of  tobacco  grown  by  the 
early  settlers  of  the  country  who  looked  upon  the 
virgin  soil  of  their  farms  as  inexhaustible — and  as 
also  the  farmers  in  the  rich  Genesee  Valley  of  New 
York,  within  my  recollection,  entertained  the  same 
views.  In  advertising  their  farms  for  sale,  one  of 
the  advantages  claimed  was  that  the  barn  and  sta- 
bles were  located  on  a  stream  of  water  sufficient  to 
carry  off  the  manure  without  the  trouble  and  ex- 
pense of  carting.  Although  this  may  be  so  with 
a  continued  succession  of  exhaustive  crops,  (all 
crops  are  exhaustive  if  all  is  taken  off  and  nothing 
returned,)  for  the  potash  and  other  manurial  in- 
gredients will  go  faster  than  the  weather  can  an- 
nually supply  them.  But  this  is  not  the  case  with 
our  orchards,  for  it  is  well  known  that  a  peach 
orchard  improves  the  soil  and  it  is  the  same  with 
the  apple  and  pear  orchards  as  may  be  seen  in  the 
soil  for  years  after  they  have  died  out  or  been  re- 
moved. I  believe  that  an  analysis  of  the  soils  of 
any  of  our  orchards  would  show  as  much  if  not 
more  lime  and  potash  than  they  could  have  done 


AND  ITS   DISEASE.  57 

at  the  planting;  however  old  they  may  be  if  not 
exhausted  by  overcropping  ;  for  the  continual  stir- 
ring of  the  soil  as  in  the  peach  orchard  and  the 
turning  in  yearly  with  the  plow  all  vegetable 
growth,  that  may  be  made  through  the  growing 
season,  and  the  fallen  foliage  of  the  trees  in  the  fall; 
together  with  the  exposure  of  the  soil  to  the  de- 
composing actions  of  rains  and  frost  arid  other 
atmospheric  influences,  make  soluble  that  which 
was  before  insoluble  for  the  support  of  plants. 
From  rock  and  stone  and  pebble  ^nd  grains  of  sand, 
down  even  below  a  microscopic  atom  is  developed 
this  important  agent,  potash,  which  plays  its  in- 
comprehensible role  in  the  support  of  vegetable 
and  animal  life.  All  these  elements  are  at  work 
in  their  proper  seasons,  furnishing  lime,  potash 
and  other  alkalies  to  the  soil,  the  same  as  we  ob- 
serve in  Virginia  for  the  past  century,  furnishing 
slowly  but  surely  a  returning  supply  of  plant  food 
to  be  husbanded,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  more  carefully 
for  the  present  and  succeeding  generations. 

We  may  assume  that  the  peach,  apple  and  pear 
contained  in  their  first  introduction  into  the  coun- 
try the  same  quantities  and  relative  proportion  of 
ingredients  in  their  composition  that  they  now  do, 
and  that  no  complaint  was  then  made  in  the  North 
that  the  soil  had  become  exhausted  of  its  potash 
and  lime  ;  nor  is  there  any  complaint  now  in  the 
South  where  the  orchards  thrive  and  produce  from 
fifty  to  sixty  years.  The  shortened  life  and  failure 


58  THE   PEACH 

in  the  North  arose  from  another  cause,  which  was 
noticed  and  first  recorded  by  Judge  Peters,  the 
President  of  the  "Philadelphia  Agricultural  So- 
ciety," who,  on  the  llth  of  February,  1806,  in  a 
communication  to  the  Society,  wrote :  "About 
fifty  years  ago,  on  the  farm  on  which  I  now  re- 
side, my  father  had  a  large  peach  orchard  which 
yielded  abundantly  until  a  general  catastrophe  be- 
fel  it.  Plentiful  crops  had  been  for  many  years 
produced  with  but  little  attention,  when  the  trees 
all  at  once  began*  to  decline  and  finally  perished. 
For  forty  years  past  I  have  observed  the  peach 
trees  in  my  neighborhood  to  be  short  lived."  This 
sudden  transition  from  a  long  life  to  a  short  one 
was  not  from  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil.  It  was 
from  disease,  and  in  the  peach  tree  the  great  and 
overshadowing  disease  caused  by  a  "parasitic 
fungi,"  and  perhaps  from  slighter  injuries  from  in- 
sect life.  These  pests  being  destroyed,  the  orchard 
will  be  restored  to  its  primitive  health,  thrift,  pro- 
ductiveness and  a  more  prolonged  life. 

The  remedy  is  at  hand  in  the  very  elements 
which  afford  food  for  the  tree,  and  of  which  it  is 
mainly  composed — lime,  potash  and  other  alkalies, 
-and  while  giving  life  and  strength  to  the  tree  they 
.are  striking  down  and  removing  the  cause  of  dis- 
ease, when  properly  applied. 

In  recommending  a  suitable  manure  for  the  peach, 
and  following  out  the  indications  shown  by  the 
analysis,  and  my  own  experience,  I  may  say  that 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  59 

"caustic  or  quick  lime  is  now  for  the  first  time  pub- 
licly announced  as  an  indispensable  specific,  remedied 
agent,  with  the  other  alkalies  named,  against  the  yel- 
lows in  the  peach  tree." 

In  seasons  of  overbearing  the  orchard  should  be 
cultivated  up  to  about  the  middle  of  July  with  the 
plow  or  cultivator  and  harrow,  the  same  as  with 
the  young  trees  before  their  bearing  and  while  cul- 
tivated in  corn ;  and  if  apparently  needing  manure 
a  light  shovelful  of  wood  ashes  applied  to  the  tree 
at  its  base — first  removing  the  earth  from  around 
it  with  a  heavy  hoe — and  this  course  of  treatment 
will  keep  the  trees  in  a  thrifty,  growing  condition, 
forming  wood  for  the  next  year's  crop,  and  sustain- 
ing them  through  their  exhaustive  efforts  under  an 
over  cropping.  But  this  unnatural  draft  upon  the 
strength  of  the  tree  may  be  avoided,  under  a  judi- 
cious thinning  out  of  the  young  fruit  to  a  moderate 
crop.  This  is  done  to  a  limited  extent  occasionally, 
but  I  have  never  yet  known  it  to  be  extended  to 
large  orchards.  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  ad- 
vantage and  profit  of  such  a  practice,  as  a  case  in 
point  from  a  successful  gardener  shows :  "  My  ten 
fruit  trees  were  loaded  with  fruit.  When  as  large 
as  hickory  nuts,  I  began  the  operation  of  remov- 
ing all  the  smallest,  and  of  thinning  out  unsparing- 
ly wherever  they  were  crowded.  After  going  over 
five  trees  in  this  way,  in  deference  to  gentle  remon- 
strances from  his  l  better  half,'  he  suspended  his 
1  ravages,'  leaving  five  untouched. 


60  THE   PEACH 

In  summing  up  he  states  that  the  peaches  on  the 
five  denuded  trees  grew  prodigiously  large.  These 
were  gathered  and  sent  to  the  Philadelphia  market 
and  brought  forty-one  dollars  clear  of  all  expenses, 
while  the  fruit  from  the  other  five  trees,  sent  to 
market,  netted  only  twenty-six  dollars,  making  a 
difference  of  fifteen  dollars  in  favor  of  thinning. 
The  ten  trees  produced  sixty-seven  dollars,  but  if 
all  had  been  thinned  the  product  would  have  been 
eighty-two  dollars. 

This  difference,  extended  to  an  orchard  of  10,000 
to  20,000  trees,  would  make  a  handsome  annual 
profit.  This  is  a  striking  illustration,  though  it 
might  not  be  carried  out  on  a  large  scale,  at  so 
high  a  rate,  still  it  is  a  hard  fact  in  favor  of  ex- 
pending a  little  labor  to  a  large  profit.  This  is  an 
impressive  example  for  our  fruit  growers  and  gar- 
deners, but  more  particularly  to  those  on  a  limited 
scale,  who  can  in  some  measure  make  up  in  quali- 
ty what  they  lack  in  quantity.  I  expect  however 
that  the  matter  is  pretty  well  adjusted  as  it  is  giv- 
ing the  advantage  to  the  small  though  careful  pro- 
ducer in  his  quality.  Where  there  is  a  will  there 
is  a  way  and  with  the  enthusiast  it  is  a  well  beaten 
path  to  the  object  of  his  ambition. 

In  applying  manures  to  trees  and  plants,  when 
required,  if  the  compost  heap,  or  the  means  to  pro- 
cure the  requisite  elements  recommended,  fall  short 
of  a  supply  for  the  entire  surface  of  the  garden  or 
orchard,  the  object  may  be  attained  by  adopting  the 


AND  ITS  DISEASE.  61 

''Chinese  method"  of  manuring  the  roots  rather 
than  the  soil,  by  applying  the  fertilizing  liquid  or 
solid  to  the  base  of  the  tree  by  first  removing  the- 
earth  from  around  it,  giving  it,  in  the  case  of  the 
peach,  a  shovelful  of  wood  ashes  occasionally,  or 
soap-suds,  lime,  poudrette,  or  a  little  composted 
guano,  or  other  alkali,  graduating  the  quantity  to 
the  strength  of  the  application  and  size  of  the  tree. 
This  will  give  better  immediate  results  than  ten 
times  the  quantity  scattered  broadcast  on  the  sur- 
face, as  around  the  base  of  the  tree  the  application 
is  at  once  direct  to  the  proper  place,  and  will  soon 
show  the  effect  on  the  orchard.  My  views  on  this 
point  are  contained  in  an  article  submitted  at  a 
meeting  of  the  Fruit  Grower's  Society  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, held  at  Reading,  January  15, 1873,  and  pub- 
lished in  the  proceedings  of  the  society,  in  volume- 
9,  of  the  Pennsylvania  State  Agricultural  Society, 
inquiring  as  to  the  "Best  Method  of  Manuring 
Fruit  Trees,  Their  Appropriate  Manures,  &c."  from 
which  the  following  is  extracted  : 

"Perhaps  it  is  enough  to  apply  the  remedy  di- 
rect to  the  roots  of  the  trees  around  their  trunky 
instead  of  treating  all  the  soil  of  the  orchard ;  ex 
periments,  as  shown,  seem  to  have  established  this 
fact.  With  my  experiments  with  ashes,  charcoal, 
poudrette,  also  with  lime,  the  application  around 
the  tree,  first  removing  the  earth  from  the  surface, 
I  have  found  quite  sufficient ;  the  potash  or  other 
alkalies  being  absorbed  and  carried  into  the  circu 


62  THE  PEACH 

lation,  and  in  the  course  of  a  few  months  a  new 
supply  of  fine  surface  roots  from  the  tree  encircling 
the  whole  stock,  spreading  in  every  direction  in  the 
alkaline  compost,  and  taking  up  the  nutritious  ele- 
ments they  contain,  increasing  the  thrift  and  fruit- 
fulness  of  the  tree.  Here  we  have  the  evidence 
that  this  portion  of  the  tree,  at  least,  absorbs  nu- 
triment as  well  as  the  roots  and  leaves,  and  that 
every  portion  of  the  tree  performs  the  same  office." 

This  practice  is  directly  in  the  teeth  of  the  the- 
ory of  Professor  Lindley,  (England's  great  vegeta- 
ble physiologist),  in  his  facetious  ridicule  in  the 
closing  page  of  his  work  on  "Horticulture,"  in 
which  he  says : 

"  I  have  seen  a  gardener,  who  ought  to  have 
known  much  better,  seduously  administering  liquid 
manure,  by  pouring  it  into  the  soil  at  the  base  of 
the  stem,  which  is  much  the  same  thing  as  if  an 
attempt  were  made  to  feed  a  man  through  the  soles 
of  his  feet." 

There  is  not,  I  would  suppose,  an  intelligent  far- 
mer in  Chester  county  but  who  could  convince  the 
old  philosopher  of  the  error  implied  in  his  ridicule 
of  the  wise  gardener,  nor  is  there  a  doctor  within 
the  same  limits  but  would  confirm  it  practical- 
ly, by  the  insertion  of  a  little  solution  of  mor- 
phia in  the  professor's  back  for  lumbago.  I  may 
here  add  that  the  Chinese  system  of  manuring  by 
a  direct  application,  as  the  manure  of  the  profes- 
sor's gardener,  is  the  most  plausible  argument  that 


AND   ITS  DISEASE.  63 

can  be  used  for  the  gross  system  of  culture,  which 
has  its  distinguished  advocates  ;*but  I  find  none 
.among  extensive  peach  growers  who  break  the 
soil  yearly. 

It  has  always  been  remarked  that  quality,  and  not 
quantity,  is  what  is  wanted.  My  observation  has 
been  that  beauty  outranks  quantity,  in  the  fruit 
market,  at  least.  To  present  that  requisite  in  more 
than  its  natural  attraction,  I  would  recommend 
an  occasional  manuring  of  the  ground  around  the 
tree  with  amrnoniacal  manures,  such  as  guano, 
poudrette,  and  with  charcoal,  which  is  a  heavy  ab- 
sorbent of  ammonia.  These  elements,  through 
their  ammonia,  will  impart  to  the  peach  an  inten- 
sity to  that  peculiar  rich,  deep  mellow  red  color, 
known  to  no  other  fruit,  giving  it  its  great  beauty 
over  all  others;  and  in  addition  to  this,  these  am- 
moniacal  elements  are,in  their  effects,  highly  enrich- 
ing to  the  soil,  as  we  are  all  aware,  and  as  strong 
alkalies  act  as  remedial  agents  against  the  "yel- 
lows." The  expense  of  fertilizers  for  the  culture 
of  the  peach  is  much  less  than  for  any  other  crop 
on  the  farm.  My  practice  was  to  a  considerable 
extent  to  plant  apple  orchards  in  the  grounds  oc- 
cupied in  peach  trees.  The  trees  are  cultivated  to- 
gether, and  the  fertilizers  of  the  one  are  adapted  to 
the  other,  and  in  some  six  or  eight  years  the  ap- 
ples will  begin  to  bear,  and  there  will  be  but  little 
interference,  the  apple  trees  being  planted  in  rows 
22x36,  the  peach  trees  16x18.  My  large  orchards 


64  AND   ITS   DISEASE. 

were  mostly  planted  18x18  feet.  I  have  tried  them 
at  from  12x12  up  to  18x20,  but  finally  settled  down 
to  18x18,  which  I  found  to  be  about  the  proper 
distance;  intersecting  the  orchard  with  roads  at 
convenient  distances  for  gathering  the  fruit,  small 
orchards  not  requiring  such  an  arrangement,  the 
head  lands  being  wide  enough  for  wagons  to  pass 
and  repass  in  removing  fruit. 


INTRODUCTORY  TO  TEE  FOLLOWING 
CHAPTER  ON  THE  INDICATIONS  OF 
THE  YELLOWS: 

The  subject  of  the  "yellows"  in  the  peach  tree 
has  come  under  the  notice  of  the  Agricultural  De- 
partment at  Washington,  and  recognized  as  a  ques- 
tion of  great  importance  to  our  agricultural  inter- 
ests. The  microscopist  of  the  Department,  Prof. 
Thomas  Taylor,  in  his  investigations  into  the  cause 
of  this  wide  spread  and  most  destructive  disease, 
has  thrown  around  the  whole  subject  many  new 
and  interesting  features  that  seem  to  have  harmo- 
nized our  Pomologists,  and  led  to  the  adoption  of 
Prof.  Taylor's  conclusions,  that  Fungi  is  the  cause 
of  this  fatal  disease.  These  microscopic  reports 
of  the  investigations  of  Prof.  Taylor,  accompanied 
by  illustrations,  will  be  found  at  length  in  the 
Agricultural  Eeports  of  the  Department  for  the 
years  1871  and  '72.  We  understand  that  further 
examinations  are  being  made  by  the  Department, 
which,  no  doubt,  will  goto  confirm  the  conclusions 
to  which  the  former  investigations  led.  This,  it  is 
hoped,  will  settle  the  great  question  which  has 
baffled  the  untiring  efforts  of  the  country  for  al- 
most the  last  century  to  discover  a  cause. 

We  have  now  only   to  apply  a   remedy  in  a 


66  THE  PEACH 

proper  way  to  restore  our  diseased  peach  districts 
and  sections  of  the  country  to  a  healthy  condition 
as  peach  growing  regions,  and  I  think  that  this 
may  be  found  in  my  practice  of  treatment  in  peach 
growing  for  the  last  thirty  years,  and  as  recom- 
mended here  in  these  pages  with  the  vigilant  pre- 
cautions I  have  pointed  out. 


INDICATION  OF  YELLOWS. 

In  the  yellows  the  bearing  tree  in  its.  incipient 
stage  of  disease  shows  a  premature  ripening  of  the 
fruit,  sometimes  only  in  a  single  branch,  or  even 
a  fruit  spur,  and  on  other  trees  the  fruit  on  a  large 
limb  may  present  the  same  early  maturity,  while 
in  both  trees  the  balance  of  the  fruit  retains  its 
natural  green,  thrifty  condition,  and  to  all  appear- 
ances perfectly  healthy,  but  as  the  disease  pro- 
gresses the  fruit  continues  to  be  affected  gradually 
in  the  same  way  up  to  the  ripening  of  the  healthy 
crop.  I  have  known  many  fruit  growers  to  be 
deceived  with  these  appearances,  supposing  that  in 
this  early  maturity  they  had  a  new  variety  of 
great  value,  which  could  be  increased  by  inocula- 
tion ;  and  for  a  time  the  supposed  new  fruit  was 
quietly  spoken  of  in  a  very  confidential  way.  But 
alas  !  the  next  year's  appearance  of  both  fruit  and 


AND  ITS   DISEASE.  6T 

tree  fully  dispelled  the  delusion,  and  instead  of  a 
new  early  variety,  the  disappointment  ended  in  a 
crop  of  small  astringent,  worthless  fruit  and  a  tree 
in  the  advanced  stage  of  the  disease.  The  most  of 
our  authors  inform  us  that  the  fruit  indicating  the 
disease  is  smaller  than  the  healthy  fruit.  My  ex- 
perience uniformally  has  been  that  in  the  first 
stages  of  the  disease,  where  but  a  few  peaches  on  a 
tree  ripen  prematurely,  they  are  much  larger  than* 
mature  fruit  of  the  general  crop  of  the  same  va- 
riety. I  well  recollect,  and  will  here  cite  one  or 
two  cases  of  trees  slightly  affected,  which  produced 
fruit  of  immense  size  : 

At  the  first  exhibition  of  the  Chester  County 
Horticultural  Society,  held  at  West  Chester,  Pa.r 
early  in  September,  1848,  Mr.  B.  Graves  exhibited 
a  few  specimens  of  the  Red  Cheek  Malacaton,  which 
for  size  and  beauty  could  not  have  been  excelled,, 
many  of  them  measuring  thirteen  inches  in  cir- 
cumference, but  all  exhibited  here  and  thereon 
the  surface  the  fatal  symptoms  of  disease,  mani- 
fested by  deep  reddish,  purple  splotches  and  hectic 
spots,  in  beautiful  contrast  with  that  rich  tint  pe- 
culiar only  to  this  delicate  fruit.  This,  of  course,, 
was  the  first  and  the  last  contribution  from  that 
noble  tree,  and  it  fell  prematurely  under  this  fatal 
disease  that  has  seldom  spared  its  victim. 

There  was  exhibited  at  the  same  time  a  beauti- 
ful collection  of  the  same  variety  from  an  orchard 
near  Chester  Springs,  which  also  showed  slight  in- 


68  THE   PEACH 

dications  of  the  same  disease.  These  took  a  pre- 
mium, and  were  sent  directly  to  the  Horticultural 
Fair  then  open  in  Philadelphia,  and  there  also  re- 
ceived the  premium  for  their  great  size  and  beauty, 
and  as  I  was  informed,  were  considered  a  valuable 
seedling  and  not  the  Malacaton  as  labelled.  Hun- 
dreds of  bushels  of  these  prematurely  ripened 
peaches  from  badly  diseased  trees  are  sold  in  the 
early  markets,  bringing  prices  much  greater  per- 
haps than  the  healthy  crop,  on  account  of  their 
early  ripening,  and  hence  it  is  that  diseased  trees 
are  left  standing  in  yards  and  gardens  and  even  in 
the  orchards  of  some  peach  districts,  diffusing  their 
poisonous  contagion  throughout  an  entire  district, 
blasting  their  own  and  their  neighbor's  healthy 
trees,  in  order  that  they  may  at  so  great  sacrifice 
gather  from  their  dying  plants  the  last  deserted 
and  tasteless  peach.  The  disease  in  its  earliest 
stages  in  young  trees,  which,  by  the  way,  some- 
times comes  from  the  nursery  in  the  stock  we  pur- 
chase, is  more  difficult  to  detect  than  at  a  later 
period. 

It  requires  a  practical  eye  and  a  knowledge  of 
the  habits  of  the  tree  to  detect  it,  and  its  peculiar 
features,  as  there  arc  several  active  agents  at  work 
which  may  cause  the  yellow  appearance,  and  the 
casual  observer  might  be  mistaken ;  and  through 
this  very  common  mistake  we  have  so  many  dif- 
ferent and  infallible  recipes  for  the  cure  of  the 
yellows.  The  next  indication,  and  the  only  one 


AND  ITS   DISEASE.  69 

by  which  the  majority  of  peach  growers  first  de- 
tect the  disease,  is  as  indicative  and  as  marked  in 
its  symptoms  of  approaching  death  as  the  "black 
vomit"  in  the  human  system.  This  next  indica- 
tion to  which  we  now  refer,  is  seen  in  the  small 
wiry  shoots  springing  from  the  body  and  large 
branches,  or  from  the  roots  at  the  base  of  the  tree, 
producing  in  every  instance  small  yellow  lanceo- 
late (lance-like)  leaves,  and  the  whole  tree  assum- 
ing a  sickly  appearance  in  leaves  and  branches, 
and  producing  small  highly  colored  fruit  with  the 
peculiar  spots  and  blotches  as  before  described, 
only  more  numerous  with  flesh  deep  red  and 
stringy,  and  fruit  worthless  for  any  purpose  of 
family  use  or  for  marketing.  I  am  so  entirely 
familiar  with  the  appearance  of  the  diseased  peach 
tree  in  all  its  stages,  that  I  can  readily  tell  the 
condition  of  an  orchard  by  examining  a  few  gen- 
eral samples  of  its  fruit  at  maturity,  either  prema- 
ture or  healthy.  In  a  special  disease  the  discovery 
of  the  cause  may  be  the  means  of  leading  to  the 
discovery  of  a  cure,  but  if  the  special  remedy  be 
known,  the  doctor  can  get  along  with  the  patient 
without  troubling  himself  so  much  with  the  cause 
of  disease.  It  is  pretty  generally  believed  that  the 
cause  here  arises  from  a  Parasitic  Fungi  in  the 
bark  and  roots  of  the  tree,  but  it  is  not  for  us  just 
here  to  discuss  that  question,  nor  is  it  at  all  neces- 
sary, as  we  know  our  remedy  and  the  course  of 
treatment  to  bo  applied,  which  has  proven  entirely 

5 


70-  THE   PEACH 

satisfactory  in  raising  fruit  on  a  large  scale  for 
twelve  or  fifteen  years  consecutively  in  the  same 
orchards  in  Chester  and  Delaware  counties,  sur- 
rounded at  the  same  time  by  thousands  of  trees, 
dead  and  dying  from  the  disease  for  the  want  of 
the  application  of  proper  measures,  and  quite  as 
much,  perhaps,  from  the  want  of  care  and^proper 
treatment.  My  large  and  successful  orchards  were 
intersected  by  public  roads  much  traveled,  and  were 
the  cause  of  great  attraction,  exciting  an  interest 
that  led  to  the  planting  of  thousands  of  trees,  but 
as  our  apple  orchards  are  now  cultivated  and  cared 
for,  these  new  plantings  of  the  peach  were  gener- 
ally left  to  take  the  rotation  of  farm  crops,  of  corn, 
oats,  wheat  and  clover,  and  they  soon  yielded  and 
finally  fell  victims  to  the  borer  and  the  yellows. 

The  disease  is  communicated  by  contact  of  roots, 
inoculation  or  trimming.  A  knife  used  on  a  dis- 
eased tree  will  communicate  the  disease  if  used  on 
a  healthy  one.  If  the  disease  arises  from  Parasitic 
Fungi,  it  is.  most  likely  communicated  by  what  is 
called  sporadic  contagion.  A  great  deal  of  the 
cause  of  its  rapid  spread,  no  doubt,  may  be  attrib- 
uted to  the  practice  so  prevalent  with  peach  grow- 
ers in  the  annual  trimming  of  their  orchards.  It 
has  no  doubt  been  ruinous  to  those  growers  who 
have  not  been  able  to  recognize  the  disease  in  its 
early  stages.  Only  the  trimming  of  a  few  diseased 
trees  in  an  orchard  may  be  the  means  of  spreading 
the  disease  over  the  entire  orchard  in  the  course  of 


AXD  ITS   DISEASE.  71' 

two  or  three  years,  and  this  would  more  likely  be 
the  case  if  the  trimming  should  be  done  in  the 
spring  or  summer  at  the  full  circulation  and  flow 
of  the  sap.  Keally  the  tree  wants  but  little  trim- 
ming after  the  head  is  formed.  This  is  to  be  regu- 
lated according  to  taste  and  convenience.  My  prac- 
tice has  been  to  head  my  trees  leaving  the  body 
five  to  six  feet  in  length,  so  as  to  cultivate  with 
freedom  and  ease  with  small  horses  or  mules,  well 
up  to  the  tree,  thus  saving  much  labor  and  afford- 
ing a  free  circulation  of  air  and  a  full  view  through 
an  orchard  of  considerable  size.  Low  heading  makes 
close  and  neat  cultivation  rather  difficult  and  more 
expensive,  and  what  is  worse  than  all  liable  to  be 
neglected.  The  peach  grower  looking  to  success- 
which  is  found  alone  in  the  health  of  his  trees  must 
be  a  bold  operator.  On  the  first  symptoms  of  dis- 
ease if  only  in  a  twig  or  a  fruit  spur,  it  must  be 
eradicated,  root  body  and  branch,  and  as  the  barren 
fig  tree  cast  into  the  fire,  renewing  its  place  by  first 
applying  to  the  soil  in  which  it  grew  the  necessary 
curative  manures  in  sufficient  quantity  for  a  healthy 
reception  for  a  new  tree  at  the  proper  season  for 
planting. 

Shall  we  longer  as  advised  by  the  old  school  of 
vegetable  Philosophers  still  wait  the  old  cycle  of 
time — 20  years — to  renew  a  removed  apple  or  peach 
tree,  or  replant  a  new  orchard  on  the  ground  fol- 
lowing the  removal  of  the  old?  I  am  prepared  to 
answer  no ;  with  the  light  bafore  us  wa  will  treat 


72  THE  PEACH 

our  orchards  as  we  treat  our  crops ;  rotate  at  a  time 
and  in  a  way  to  suit  our  own  convenience,  and  not 
to  suit  the  tastes  and  convenience  of  fungoid  toad- 
stools and  infusoria,  our  enemies  in  peach  growing 
and  so  insignificant  too,  that  we  have  to  use  500  or 
1000  diameter  microscopic  power  to  bring  them 
within  the  range  of  our  vision. 

11  Nature  abhors  a  vacuum,"  so  said  the  old  Phil- 
osophers ;  their  successors  said  nature  did  no  such 
thing  and  proved  it.  We  can  point  to  farmers  as  a 
class  residing  within  one  hundred  miles  of  the  city 
of  Philadelphia,  who  let  their  corn  land  rest  every 
alternate  year,  while  the  farmers  in  Pennsylvania 
found  out  long  ago  that  they  could  not  afford  their 
lands  any  such  indulgence;  each  field  must  pro- 
duce a  crop  annually  and  respond  liberally  to  good 
treatment.  This  is  the  course  to  be  pursued  in 
peach  growing  and  this  is  what  we  intend  to  do. 
We  have  found  out  long  ago  through  dearly  bought 
experience  that  the  system  of"  masterly  inactivity" 
never  did  nor  never  will  pay  in  farming  at  least. 
Whether  the  peach  is  a  long  lived  or  a  short  lived 
tree,  or  a  large  tree  or  a  small  tree  we  shall  not 
stop  here  to  enquire,  but  we  intend  to  make  it  pro- 
duce as  long  at  least  as  our  faithful  horse  labors  on 
the  farm,  or  our  generous  dairy  cow  affords  us  milk 
and  what  more  could  we  ask  of  the  peach  ?  With 
care  and  exemption  from  disease  we  may  double 
the  period  of  its  production,  for  such  is  its  lon- 
gevity in  th^  healthy  districts  not  one  hundred 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  73- 

miles  south  of  Philadelphia,  that  we  can  reason- 
ably look  for  a  more  extended  limit.  Why  then 
should  not  the  peach  be  permitted  a  place  on  the 
farm,  and  raised  to  the  dignity  of  a  new  staple  for 
Pennsylvania,  and  at  once  for  the  counties  con- 
tiguous to  our  great  markets  supplying  the  annual 
want  which  is  now  supplied  from  adjoining  States  ? 
From  the  quick  return  of  the  crop  under  careful 
culture  of  four  short  years,  the  six  counties  of  Del- 
aware, Chester,  Montgomery,  Bucks,  Berks  and 
Lancaster,  may  reap  a  rich  harvest  from  the  pro- 
duct of  the  peach  orchard,  increasing  yearly,  to 
meet  the  increasing  consumption  and  in  a  little 
while  yielding  more  in  profits  than  any  other  branch 
of  farm  industry,  not  excepting  Lancaster's  great 
staple — tobacco. 


PEACH  BORER,  &G. 

The  Peach  worm  or  borer  is  a  four  winged  in- 
sect, wasp  like  in  shape,  and  of  a  steel  blue  color. 
It  deposits  its  eggs  from  early  in  the  summer  until 
fall,  near  the  ground  around  the  base  of  the  tree. 
The  young  larva  or  worm  enters  the  bark  at  the 
root  of  the  tree  and  for  the  whole  year  subsisting 
on  and  ringing  the  tree  if  not  attended  to,  and  in 
the  spring  having  finished  its  ravages  encases  itself 
in  a  gum  and  saw  dust  like  envelope  or  cocoon, 
under  the  bark  or  just  beneath  the  earth,  around 
the  door  of  its  premises,  soon  to  change  from  pupa 
to  insect  life.  It,  rarely  happens  that  healthy  trees 
are  entirely  destroyed  by  it  unless  greatly  neglec- 
ted. As  it  confines  its  depredations  to  the  bark 
not  entering  the  wood  it  is  easily  captured  and  de- 
stroyed on  examination  in  the  fall  if  carefully  done, 
and  the  larva  removed  by  a  sharp  pointed  knife ; 
and  about  an  ounce,  of  hard  soap  firmly  rubbed 
around  the  base  of  the  tree  an  inch  or  so  beneath 
the  surface  and  if  about  the  same  quantity  be  ap- 
plied to  the  place  injured  by  the  worm  or  in  the 
incision  made  by  the  knife  it  would  be  of  great 
benefit  in  healing  over  the  wound  and  giving 
growth  and  vigor  to  the  tree. 

The  potash  in  this  case  has  its  direct  application 


AND  ITS  DISEASE. 

to  the  sap  circulation  and  is  the  very  kind  of  food 
the  little  wiry  surface  roots  are  looking  after  in  the 
soil  to  carry  to  the  limbs,  leaves  and  fruit.  Here 
again  is  an  application  of  the  "  Chinese  system''  of 
manuring  the  tree  instead  of  the  soil.  These  two 
ounces  of  soap  (potash)  will  do  more  good  to  the 
tree  than  a  half  a  bushel  of  ashes  sown  on  the  bare 
surface  of  the  ground  broadcast,  and  it  will  be  as 
effective  in  keeping  off  the  borer  through  the  season. 
The  cheapest  and  most  efficient  and  expeditious 
way  to  keep  an  orchard  clear  of  the  peach  worm 
or  borer,  is  the  plan  above  recommended  of  re- 
moving it  with  a  knife  and  applying  an  ounce  or 
two  of  cheap  hard  soap.  The  application  of  the 
soap,  while  it  repels  the  insect  and  borer  is  a  pow- 
erful stimulant  to  the  tree,  and  acts  quickly  and 
efficiently.  Other  enemies  that  commit  their  de- 
predations on  the  limbs,  branches  and  leaves  of 
the  tree,  though  slight  compared  to  the  yellows, 
such  as  curled  leaf,  mildew,  &c.,  &c.,  destructive  to 
small  limbs,  call  for  their  remedies  also.  Strong 
soap  suds,  or  a  solution  of  potash  and  urine  will 
destroy  mildew,  fungi,  aphides,  bark  insects,  &c. 
Whatever  is  effective  to  the  root  is  also  beneficial 
to  the  branches.  I  have  always  found  whitewash 
sufficient,  and  in  looking  at  the  many  recommen- 
dations by  practical  Pomologists  I  -find  they  all 
make  lime  the  leading  ingredient,  and  it  seems  that 
lime  and  potash  are  indeed  about  all  that  is  re- 
quired to  produce  the  required  effect,  which  is  to 


76  THE   PEACH 

destroy  the  parasitic  agents,  insects  and  fungi  on 
the  limbs,  body  and  leaves  of  the  tree.  A  good 
wash  for  the  limbs  and  body  of  the  tree  is  a  half  a 
peck  of  unslacked  lime,  one  quart  of  soft  soap,  and 
pour  on  this  warm  water  until  it  comes  to  the  con- 
sistence of  whitewash,  and  apply  with  a  brush.  If 
the  whitewash  is  objectionable  it  can  be  changed 
to  any  color  desired.  Others  have  recommended 
about  the  same  composition ;  adding,  however,  sul- 
phur, soot  and  various  compounds,  but  the  vital 
destructive  agents  in  all  such  washes  are  the  lime 
and  potash. 


PRUNING. 

I  have  already  elsewhere  remarked  that  the 
peach  really  requires  very  little  of  what  is  gener- 
ally understood  as  pruning  or  trimming  after  the 
head  of  the  tree  is  properly  formed,  except  to  keep 
all  sprouts  or  shoots  cut  or  rubbed  off  as  they  ap- 
pear springing  from  the  roots  at  the  collar  of  the 
tree  or  from  the  main  body.  The  first  pruning  or 
trimming  is  to  the  young  tree,  after  it  arrives  from 
the  nursery  and  before  planting,  which  has  been 
fully  described.  The  system  of  shortening  the 
branches  and  limbs  as  practised  among  amateurs, 
gardeners  and  small  growers,  though  employed  to 
but  a  limited  extent,  if  judiciously  applied,  is  pro- 
ductive of  very  satisfactory  results.  It  is,  indeed, 
but  a  counterpart  to  plowing,  which  is  a  shorten- 
ing in  of  the  roots ;  both  performing  important 
parts  in  perpetuating  thrift,  productiveness  and 
life  of  the  tree,  and  more  particularly  in  dis- 
eased districts,  and  under  the  present  system  of 
peach  growing  which  has  undergone  but  little 
change  of  importance  for  the  past  fifty  years  at 
least,  the  tree  for  a  little  time  producing,  though 
holding  out  but  a  false  hope,  then  lingering  and 
dying  under  its  fatal  disease  the  yellows.  In  such 
cases  this  double  cutting  in  by  the  plow  at  the 


78  THE   PEACH 

roots  and  the  knife  at  the  limbs,  destroying  or 
palliating  for  a  time  to  a  considerable  extent  the 
incipient  stage  of  the  disease  in  the  tree,  whether 
it  arises  from  the  agency  of  an  insect  or  from  the 
ravages  of  a  parasitic  fungi ;  in  either  case  it  af- 
fects the  body  and  branches  as  well  as  the  roots  of 
the  tree.  "While  the  plow  cuts  and  turns  up  the 
entire  network  of  surface  roots,  and  destroys  as 
well  the  active  agent  of  disease,  the  knife  performs 
a  like  office  by  cutting  in  the  limbs  and  branches, 
destroying  to  a  large  extent  the  active  agent  there, 
thus  divesting  the  tree  to  the  extent  of  the  loss  of 
its  diseased  roots  and  branches  of  the  fell  enemy, 
leaving  the  tree  in  its  full  flow  of  sap  to  throw  out 
its  thousands  of  new  surface  roots  as  feeders  to 
work  in  the  more  healthy  soil  which  has  just  been 
turned  down  by  the  plow.  The  shortened  limbs 
in  the  new  growth  now  in  active  sympathy  with 
the  roots,  respond  in  a  more  healthy  current  of 
sap — the  life-blood  of  the  tree — in  a  vigorous 
growth  of  wood  and  root  for  another  year  of  pro 
ductiveness. 

This  system  of  culture  of  the  peach  tree,  plow- 
ing and  cutting  in  the  branches,  with  the  addition 
of  a  bold  operation  in  eradicating  the  diseased 
trees,  if  any,  as  they  appear,  attended  by  its  re- 
versing effects  of  health  and  returning  vigor,  is 
one  among  the  strong  evidences  that  this  infection 
is  caused  by  fungi.  A  pruning  of  the  roots  and  a 
judicious  cutting  of  the  branches  and  limbs  in  the 


AND    ITS    DISEASE.  79 

way  I  have  pointed  out,  and  for  the  reason  as- 
signed, and  even  in  the  application  of  remedial 
agents,  prevention  of  the  disease  would  be  more 
benefit  to  the  orchard  than  any  blind  empirical 
course  of  the  highest  culture  that  could  be 
adopted. 

The  large  peach-growers,  most  of  whom  are  on 
the  healthy  side  of  the  peach-dividing  line  between 
the  North  and  South,  are  exempt  from  the  evils 
referred  to,  and  they  have  not  adopted  this  course 
of  shortening  in  to  any  extent,  leaving  the  orchard 
after  the  proper  heading,  pretty  much  to  its  natu- 
ral growth,  attending  rather  to  the  necessary  thin- 
ning out  of  all  intruding  sprouts,  and  removing 
dead  and  dying  branches,  leaving  the  tree  as  de- 
scribed by  one  of  our  distinguished  Pomologists, 
"when  in  fruit  with  bending  slender  branches  in 
graceful  curves,  so  as  to  open  the  spreading  heads 
and  let  in  the  sun  and  air  to  color  up  the  fruit, 
all  through  the  middle  of  the  tree  as  well  as  the 
outside."  "This  is  the  plan,"  he  further  observes, 
"which  is  found  to  work  much  better  than  head- 
ing the  tree  in."  As  this  mode,  it  seems,  has  be- 
come almost  a  universal  system  and  has  worked 
well,  and  having  its  convenience,  it  will  be  contin- 
ued there  with  large  peach  growers,  while  the 
heading-in  system  will  be  practised  North  among 
amateurs,  gardeners  and  small  producers.  It  is 
evident  that  a  tree  judiciously  cut  in,  and  the  fruit 
thinned  in  years  of  overbearing,  will  produce  fruit 


80  THE  PEACH 

under  good  cultivation  of  increased  size  and  im- 
proved in  quality,  which  will  command  a  much 
higher  price  in  the  market  than  the  general  crop 
under  ordinary  care. 

*These  are  all  questions  that  enter  into  the  con- 
sideration of  labor,  expense  and  time  consumed, 
and  are  for  each  one  to  decide  for  himself.  The 
active,  energetic,  vigilant  and  farsighted  man  in 
the  peach,  as  well  as  in  every  other  enterprise, 
will  avail  himself  of  all  the  advantages  to  be  de- 
rived to  the  extent  of  his  ability,  and  will  adopt 
such  a  system  as  will  prove  to  the  greatest  ad- 
vantage between  expense  and  profit. 

*  Well  directed  pruning  is  one  of  the  most  useful,  and  if 
ill  directed,  it  is  among  the  most  mischevious  operations  that 
can  take  place  in  application  to  a  tree. 


THE  VALUE  OF  PEACH  GROWING. 

There  is  no  crop  that  can  be  raised  with  less  la- 
bor and  expense,  and  a  quicker  return,  than  that 
of  the  peach,  and  none  that  will  give  a  greater  re- 
turn for  the  capital  and  labor  employed.  The  peach 
farms  in  Upper  Delaware  and  Maryland,  have  re- 
turned to  their  owners  the  most  fabulous  amounts 
for  their  investments,  far  exceeding  in  profit  any 
other  staple  crop  that  has  been  raised  in  the  Mid- 
dle States,  and  on  a  scale  never  before  heard  of  in 
this  or  any  other  country.  Some  of  the  orchards 
containing  from  1,000  to  1,800  acres  have  netted 
their  owners  from  $20,000  to  $30,000  annually.  A 
peach  orchard  in  New  Castle  county,  Delaware,  of 
400  acres,  netted  the  owner  in  one  crop,  $38,000. 
One  in  Kent  county,  Maryland,  of  some  600  acre?, 
produced  a  crop  paying  $31,000,  and  the  same  or- 
chard in  1879,  yielded  $42,000.  In  1873,  the  Dela- 
ware Peach  Growers'  Association,  reported  that 
there  were  sent  from  the  Delaware  peninsula  to  the 
northern  markets  of  Philadelphia,  and  New  York, 
1,288,500  baskets  of  peaches,  or  2,577  car  loads  by 
the  railroad.  Adding  the  quantity  shipped  by 
steamers  and  sailing  vessels,  and  the  amount  canned, 


82  THE   PEACH 

the  actual  quantity  amounted,  in  the  aggregate,  to 
2,000,000  of  baskets.  In  1872,  the  whole  district, 
comprising  the  Eastern  Shore  of  Maryland,  mar- 
keted, 3,500,000  baskets.  The  late  Col.  Wilkins, 
on  Chester  river,  Kent  county,  Maryland,  had  1,350 
acres  in  with  peach  trees,  numbering  137,000,  pro- 
ducing in  bearing  years  from  $30,000  to  $40,000 
annually.  In  the  State  of  Michigan  peach  grow- 
ing is  carried  on  to  a  considerable  extent,  along  the 
shores  of  the  lake,  some  sixty  miles  from  Chicago, 
and  furnishes  the  fruit  to  the  city  and  surrounding 
towns.  It  is  reported  that  Mr.  A.  T.  Dykeman, 
President  of  the  Horticultural  Society  of  the  State, 
in  1873,  sold  peaches  to  the  amount  of  $10,000 
from  sixty-five  acres,  and  in  1872  a  grower  from 
six  acres  received  $1,700. 

Peaches  are  grown  to  a  fine  profit  in  Wisconsin, 
for  Chicago.  All  these  western  districts,  including 
Ohio,  Indiana  and  other  States,  complain  of  the 
ravages  of  the  yellows,  and  the  Legislature  of  Wis- 
.  consin  has  even  passed  an  act  to  prevent  the  spread 
of  the  disease,  and  I  am  informed  that  the  law  works 
well.  Thousands  of  dollars  have  been  invested  by 
individual  enterprise  in  planting  and  cultivating  the 
pear,  and  although  we  hear,  in  every  direction,  of 
its  failure  in  dwarf  trees,  still  the  markets  seem  to 
be  pretty  well  supplied  through  the  fruit  season, 
yet  at  low  prices,  and  particularly  when  it  comes 
in  competition  with  the  peach,  which,  during  the 
past  season,  was  very  marked.  I  noticed  in  the 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  8$ 

market  at  West  Chester,  and  also  in  Philadelphia, 
baskets  of  first  class  Bartlett  pears,  in  fine  condi- 
tion, by  the  side  of  Delaware  peaches ;  the  pears 
were  going  off  slowly  at  fifty  cents  per  basket, 
while  the  peaches  were  readily  bringing  seventy- 
five  cents.  As  a  market  fruit  for  production  and 
profit  the  pear  pales  before  the  peach — the  expense 
and  extra  culture  required  in  producing  good  pears 
is  never  returned  in  the  product  to  half  the  profits 
of  the  peach — and  again  the  long  time  required  be- 
fore it  is  brought  into  a  bearing  condition,  is  one 
of  the  great  drawbacks  to  pear  culture. 

He  who  plants  pears, 
Plants  for  his  heirs. 

But  notwithstanding  all  these  disadvantages  to- 
be  met  with  by  the  enthusiast  in  pear  culture,  I 
have,  at  different  times,  set  out  some  3,000  trees, 
dwarf  and  standard,  for  orchard  culture,  but  they 
have  not  been  satisfactory.  The  pear  is  sold  by 
the  single  specimen,  while  the  peach  is  sold  by  the 
crate  or  basket.  Many  of  the  large  estates  in- 
Lower  Maryland  and  Delaware,  which  were  orig- 
inally purchased  for  a  few  dollars  per  acre,  are  now 
fortunes  to  their  owners.  On  my  last  visit  to  the 
Ray  bold  orchards,  at  Delaware  city,  I  was  informed 
by  the  Colonel,  that  he  had  then  some  700  acres  in 
peach  trees,  and  some  500  acres  were  then  in  bear- 
ing. Crosby  Morton,  on  the  Chester  river,  at  Round 
Top,  had  some  1,000  acres  in  trees,  and  he  informed 


84  THE   PEACH 

me  that  in  a  settlement  between  him  and  his  part- 
ner of  the  receipts  of  the  season's  crop  they  divided 
near  $50,000  between  them.  These  net  profits  from 
these  large  orchards  seem  immense,  but  smaller 
growers  greatly  exceed  in  the  rate  of  profits,  owing 
to  the  greater  and  more  economical  facility  of 
handling,  and  the  ability  of  doing  it,  as  everything 
can  be  managed  with  system  and  economy,  and 
without  the  loss  that  occurs  from  dependence  upon 
others.  The  encouraging  feature  of  the  peach  busi- 
ness is  in  its  almost  unlimited  extent  and  ever  in- 
creasing demand,  and  necessarily  so  from  the  un- 
limited wants  of  our  improving  towns  and  coun- 
try. Peaches  are  marketed  by  the  millions  of  bas- 
kets, where  apples  and  other  fruits  are  counted 
only  by  the  thousands.  The  large  peach  grower 
must  be  a  landholder ;  and,  like  the  merchant,  he 
has  his  large  aggregate  profits,  and  correspondingly 
large  expenses  and  losses  in  the  management  of 
business,  while  the  small  peach  grower,  in  most 
cases,  in  counties  contiguous  to  large  cities,  would 
manage  the  orchard  and  its  products  under  his  own 
eye  from  the  field  to  the  market,  making  the  best 
of  everything  and  doubling  his  profits.  The  great 
peach  growers  of  Delaware  and  Maryland  are  looked 
upon  as  the  Wanamakers  of  the  orchards,  though 
with  goods  not  "  marked,"  while  the  small  pro- 
ducer has  his  brands  for  superior  quality  on  the 
cheek  of  his  ripe,  luscious  fruit,  to  be  disposed  of 
in  a  comparatively  retail  market.  The  one  sells 


AND   ITS  DISEASE.  85 

in  the  field,  by  the  orchard  or  the  crop,  the  other 
by  the  basket  and  the  peck,  obtaining  larger  prices 
and  better  profits. 

If  this  should  maet  the  eje  of  any  one  who  has 
b3coni3  tired  or  worn  out  with  farming,  and  is  de- 
sirous of  disposing  of  his  farm,  I  would  advise 
him  to  plant  from  ten  to  fifteen  acres  in  peach 
trees,  and  at  the  same  time  a  suitable  portion  with 
apple  tress  among  the  peaches  at  proper  distances 
apart.     Such   an  improvement    in   two    or   three 
years,  or  just  at  bearing,  will  secure  a  purchaser 
at  a  greatly  enhanced  price,  paying  more  than  one 
thousand  per  cent,  on  the  cost  of  the  orchard.     In 
this  I  have  had  a  great  deal   of  experience,  as  I 
have  never  failed  in  putting  in  a  good  orchard  as 
the  first  improvement  on  the  many  farms  I  have 
purchased,  if  I  found  they  wanted  it.     I  have  found 
it  as  a  general  rule  that  nothing  is  more  attractive 
to  farmers  and  their  families  than  a  good  apple 
and  peach  orchard  just  coming  into  bearing.     The 
purchaser  in  this  can  see  at   once  the  interest  on 
his  mortgage  if  purchased  on  a  credit,  as  nine- 
tenths  of  farms  are,  and  if  an  orchard  of  considera- 
ble size,  the  entire  principal  too  by  the  day  of 
maturity.     If  you  have  such  a  farm  for  sale,  or 
one  more  particularly  wearing  out  or  thin  in  soil 
and  unsightly  for  selling,  take  my  advice,  plant 
an  orchard,  for  it  will  be  not  only  a  benefit  to  you 
but  a  lasting  advantage  to  your  purchaser. 


VARIETIES   OF  PEACHES  FOR    CULTI- 
VATION. 

Froin  the  great  varieties  of  peaches  recommend- 
ed in  the  different  peach  growing  districts  of  the 
country,  selections  have  been  made  of  such  as 
have  been  found  on  trial  as  best  adapted  to  the 
different  localities. 

In  all  such  selections  regard  should  be  paid  to 
those  combining  the  elements  of  good  marketable 
fruit,  good  keepers,  healthy,  large,  fine  color,  and 
of  vast  importance,  to  be  good  carriers,  standing 
safe  transportation  to  market,  and  such  as  ripen 
in  regular  succession  from  the  earliest  to  the  latest, 
extending  through  the  peach  season  from  about 
the  middle  of  July  to  the  middle  or  last  of  Octo- 
ber, in  a  region  near  the  city  of  Philadelphia. 

The  following  list  contains  the  most  of  the  lead- 
ing varieties  grown  and  fruited  in  the  peach  dis- 
tricts of  Maryland,  Delaware  and  Pennsylvania, 
and  have  for  the  most  part  been  well  adapted  to 
the  Eastern  and  Western  States.  Many  of  the 
kinds  named  have  been  standard  varieties  for  the 
last  thirty  to  fifty  years  and  over,  and  have  not 
been  superceded  in  their  good  qualities  as  paying 
market  fruits.  Others  have  been  introduced  with- 


AND   ITS   DISEASE.  87 

in  a  later  period  for  superior  excellence,  such  as 
Crawford's  Late  and  early  Reeves'  Favorite,  Moun- 
tain Eose,  Stump  the  World,  &c.  We  have  now 
a  class  of  new  early  peaches,  mostly  from  the  seed 
of  the  Hale's  Early,  that  ripen  in  Pennsylvania  in 
July.  Among  them  are  Alexander,  Amsden's 
June,  Downing,  Early  Beatrice.  These  and  other 
varieties  are  offered  by  our  nurserymen,  and  al- 
though they  have  not  as  yet  been  sufficiently 
tested,  some  of  them  offer  well,  and  are  worthy  of 
early  trial,  as  they  commence  the*  peach  season 
nearly  a  month  in  advance  of  the  Early  York, 
which  some  thirty  years  back  was  about  the  first 
peach  in  the  market,  its  season  here  in  Pennsylva- 
nia being  from  about  the  fourth  to  the  tenth  of 
August.  The  Early  Alexander  was  ripe  here  in 
1879,  from  the  15th  to  the  23d  of  July.  The  Ams- 
den's June  and  Downing  are  even  earlier.  It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  they  all  may  prove  more  valuable 
than  their  parent,  "Rale's  Early,"  which  is  now 
in  Maryland  and  Delaware  as  well  as  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, pretty  generally  supplanted  by  more  relia- 
ble varieties.  I  feel  hopeful  that  some  of  these 
new  varieties  will  prove  themselves  entirely  re- 
liable. 

Name.  Color.  Quality.  Ripe. 

Amsden's  June. Red Good July. 

Alexander Red Good July. 

Downing Red  and  White.  .Good July. 

Wilder Red  and  White.  .Good  size July. 

Beatrice Red  and  White. . Small July. 


88  THE  PEACH 

Name.  Color.  Quality.  Ripe. 

Kale's  Early . .  .Red  and  White.  .Rots  badly Aug. 

Troth's  Early.  .Red  and  White... Fine  Market  Peach.  .Aug. 
Mount'n  Rose.. Red  and  White.. .Good  Market  Peach.. Aug. 

Early  York ....  Red  and  White. . .  Popular Aug. 

Crawf  d's  Early  Yellow Large  and  Good Aug. 

Yellow       Rare 

Ripe Yellow Large  and  Good Aug. 

Morris  FavoriteRed  and  White... Large  and  Good Aug. 

Oldmixon Red  and  White. . .  Large  and  Fine Aug. 

Foster Yellow Like  Crawford  Early.  Aug. 

George  IV Yellow Beautiful Aug. 

Reeves'  Fav'te.  Yellow Large,  Splendid Sept. 

Fox  Seedling    .Red  and  White... Excellent  bearer Sept. 

Crawford's  LateYellow Splendid,  Valuable  . .  Sept. 

Shipley's  Red.. .Red  and  White... Valuable Sept. 

Grosse  MignoneRed  and  White... Fine  peach Sept. 

Stump       the 

World Red  and  White. ..Very  fine Sept. 

Susquehanna.... Yellow..  Very  large. Sept. 

Ward's      Late, 

Free Red  and  White... Popular Sept. 

Patterion's 

White White Very  fine Sept. 

Crocket's  Late 

White White Great  bearer Sept. 

Free  Heath White Good Sept. 

Free  Smock Yellow Valuable Oct. 

Salway Yellow Oct. 

Late  Heath White Valuable Oct. 

Headly Ripening  after  the  Heath. 


EXTRACTS 

From  the  Proceedings  of  the  Pennsylvania  Fruit 
Growers1  Society,  at  its  Twenty-first  Annual  Meet- 
ing, held  at  Bethlehem,  Pa.,  January  21  and  22, 
1880.  Judge  Stitzel,  President,  of  Reading,  Pa., 
in  the  Chair. 

Mr.  Thomas  W.  Harvey,  of  Chester  County, 
Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Orcharding,  re- 
ported with  other  interesting  matter  that  Mr.  John 
Rutter,  of  West  Chester,  had  prepared  an  exhaus- 
tive paper  on  the  Peach  and  its  diseases,  contain- 
ing an  experience  of  over  thirty  years  in  its  cul- 
ture in  Chester  and  Delaware  counties,  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  in  the  State  of  Maryland,  showing  that 
peaches  can  be  more  successfully  grown  and  put 
into  the  markets  in  better  condition  and  to  much 
greater  profit  from  these  counties  than  from  Dela- 
ware and  Maryland,  and  he  hoped  that  it  would 
be  asked  for  by  the  Society,  whereupon  Messrs. 
Harvey,  Sattherwaite  and  Noble  were  appointed  a 
committee  to  wait  on  Mr.  Rutter  and  to  invite  him 
to  give  his  experience  and  views  to  the  Society 
on  peach  growing. 


90  THE  PEACH 

Mr.  Josiah  Hoopes  said  "the  election  of  new 
members,  he  believed,  is  always  in  order,  and  the 
man  I  now  propose  to  elect,  twenty  years  ago,  did 
more  than  any  one  in  the  organization  and  early 
prosperity  of  the  Society,  and  he  now  moved  that 
John  Eutter,  Esq.,  of  West  Chester,  be  elected  an 
honorary  member  of  this  Society.  Mr.  Rutter  was 

elected  by  acclamation. 

*t  •$"*.*,--* 

The  Committee  on  Mr.  Rutter's  paper  on  Peach 
Growing,  reported  that  the  paper  referred  to  was  a 
manuscript  of  a  treatise  on  the  culture  of  the  Peach 
and  its  diseases,  remedies,  &c.,  just  prepared  for 
publication,  that  it  was  too  voluminous  for  a  single 
address,  and  recommended  that  extracts  be  read 
from  it.  The  Secretary  now  read  such  extracts  as 
were  selected.  They  were  lengthy  and  very  ex- 
haustive. These,  with  Mr.  Rutter's  very  'able  ad- 
dress before  the  Society,  presented  clearly  his 
mode  of  culture,  treatment  of  the  diseases  of  the 
Peach,  &c. 

He  gave  a  brief  history  of  the  introduction  of 
the  peach  into  the  American  colonies,  adaptability 
of  our  soil  and  climate  to  its  growth,  and  great 
productiveness,  continuing  in  health  and  vigor  to 
an  old  age,  affording  annually  its  delicious  tribute 
as  a  luxury  to  tho  early  colonists.  About  the 
commencement  of  the  American  Revolution  a 
change  suddenly  came  over  the  health  and  pro- 
ductiveness of  the  tree,  first  appearing  near  Phila- 


AND  ITS  DISEASE.  91 

delphia,  as  reported  by  Judge  Peters,  Mr.  Heston 
and  other  peach  growers  of  that  day,  and  this 
change  they  spoke  of  was  that  fatal  disease  the 
yellows.  It  has  continued  its  ravages  on  the 
orchard  with  almost  unremitted  virulence  ever 
since,  and  owing  to  the  disease,  peach  growers 
were  discouraged  in  extensive  planting  in  Penn- 
sylvania for  market  purposes.  New  Jersey,  Dela- 
ware and  Maryland  became  the  peach  growing 
regions  to  supply  our  markets,  and  for  the  last 
fifty  years  the  two  last  named  States  have  enjoyed 
an  almost  entire  monopoly  of  the  peach  market  in 
Philadelphia  and  New  York.  Mr.  Kutter  next 
treated  of  his  successful  system  of  peach  growing 
for  years  in  Chester  and  Delaware  counties,  both 
diseased  districts  and  subject  to  the  yellows,  show- 
ing that  under  his  treatment  peaches  were  grown 
successfully,  and  more  so  than  in  the  healthy  dis- 
tricts in  Southern  Maryland,  and  with  much 
greater  profit  to  the  producer.  The  yellows  is  a 
specific  disease  affecting  the  peach,  and  the  cause 
assigned,  and  pretty  generally  now  conceded,  is  a 
parasitic  fungi,  and  the  remedies  are  found  in 
caustic  alkalies.  These  remedies  were  elaborately 
and  exhaustively  treated.  He  gave  a  chemical 
analysis  of  the  peach,  apple  and  pear  tree,  showing 
that  the  three  great  and  leading  elements  were 
lime,  potash  and  phosphate  of  lime,  and  that  the 
fertilizing  elements  required  for  one  were  the 
proper  food  for  the  others ;  that  two  of  these  three 


92  THE   PEACH 

elements,  lirne  and  potash,  which  contributed  so 
largely  in  their  composition  and  healthful  growth, 
were  the  very  agents,  when  properly  prepared  and 
applied,  that  proved  destructive  to  all  the  enemies 
of  the  tree,  whether  from  insects  or  parasitic  fungi. 
Quick  or  caustic  lime,  potash,  guano  and  all  the 
ammoniacal  alkalies,  act  as  purifiers  and  produce 
the  desired  result — the  entire  destruction  of  these 
diseases,  whether  in  the  body,  limbs  or  roots  of 
the  tree ;  in  the  one  case  by  the  application  of  a 
wash,  and  to  the  roots  a  treatment  of  lime,  which 
is  preferred  to  ashes  on  account  of  its  cheapnessr 
convenience  and  access,  and  as  favorably  known 
to  every  farmer  as  an  indispensible  agent  in  the 
fertilizing  of  his  soil.  The  peach  tree,  he  said,  is 
an  improver  of  the  soil,  and  lands  of  medium  fer- 
tility are  to  be  preferred  for  peach  orchards,  as  the 
ground  will  continue  to  improve  yearly  under  cul- 
tivation. 

The  peach  is  the  least  expensive  crop  on  the 
farm ;  this  brings  peach  growing  within  the  capa- 
city of  all  as  a  cheap,  available  and  profitable  crop. 
The  successful  growing  of  this  delicious  fruit  is  of 
the  highest  importance  to  every  one,  from  the 
farmer  with  his  broad  acres  and  his  thousands  of 
trees,  to  the  town,  village  and  country  house- 
keeper who  has  a  yard  or  lawn,  however  limited. 
Each  can  become  his  own  peach  grower  on  a  suffi- 
cient scale  to  supply  with  a  few  thrifty  trees  his 
entire  wants  in  this  delicious  fruit.  In  a  few  short 


AND  ITS   DISEASE.  93 

years  the  farmers  of  the  six  eastern  counties  of  the 
State,  Lancaster,  Chester,  Delaware,  Montgomery, 
Bucks  and  Berks,  within  a  few  hours  each  of  the 
market,  will  be  found  relieving  us  from  our  de- 
pendence on  Delaware  and  Maryland,  our  two 
two  neighboring  States,  which  have  enjoyed  a  mo- 
nopoly of  our  city  markets  for  the  last  fifty  years. 
The  result  of  Mr.  Butter's  peach  growing  in 
Pennsylvania  and  Maryland,  on  a  large  scale  for 
a  series  of  years — the  first  in  a  district  diseased 
with  the  yellows,  and  the  other  in  a  healthy  location 
not  in  any  way  affected  with  the  disease — is  infor- 
mation that  is  vastly  to  the  advantage  of  Pennsyl- 
vania in  quantity  and  quality  of  fruit.  The  un- 
certainty of  the  peach  crop  is  increased  as  we 
leave  Pennsylvania  and  proceed  South,  even  into 
Georgia  and  Florida.  Again,  the  fruit  shipped 
from  Maryland,  he  said,  is  gathered  in  an  imma- 
ture state,  quite  hard,  and  before  it  has  acquired 
that  sweet  saccharine  taste  which  is  only  found  in 
a  ripe  peach.  This  immature  condition  is  re- 
quired for  peaches  handled  so  frequently  and 
roughly  in  their  long  transportation.  They  ripen 
on  their  way  to  market  and  never  attain  the  rich, 
luscious  taste  of  a  fully  matured  peach.  The  peach 
is  perishable  at  maturity  and  requires  a  near  mar- 
ket and  careful  handling.  As  to  -the  profits  in 
peach  growing  between  the  North  and  South — a 
distance  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles — there  is 
no  approximate  comparison,  Pennsylvania  having 


94  THE   PEACH 

so  greatly  the  advantage  of  nearness  of  market  and 
superior  condition  of  fruit. 

At  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Butter's  address,  on 
motion  of  H.  M.  Engle,  of  Marietta,  the  following 
resolution  was  passed : 

Resolved,  That  the  hearty  thanks  of  this  Society 
are  hereby  tendered  to  Mr.  John  Butter,  of  West 
Chester,  for  his  generosity  in  giving  us  the  benefit 
of  his  most  valuable  and  long  experience  in  peach 
culture. 


INDEX. 


INTRODUCTION,  -      3 

GENERAL  EEMARKS  ON  THE  PEACH,  -    5 

FIRST  APPEARANCE  OF  THE  YELLOWS,  10 
TREATMENT  OF  PEACH  FARM  NEAR  WEST 

CHESTER,  PA.  •  22 
DIFFICULTIES  TO  BE  OVERCOME,  29 
EXPERIENCE  IN  PEACH  GROWING  IN  MARY- 
LAND, •  34 
LOCATION  AND  SOIL  FOR  PEACH  CULTURE,  38 
DIRECTIONS  FOR  PLANTING,  ETC.,  -  40 
ADVANTAGES  OF  PEACH  CULTURE,  -  47 
MANURES  AND  EEMEDIAL  AGENTS,  -  50 
BENEFITS  OF  POTASH,  ETC.,  -  55 
QUICK  LIME  THE  GREAT  EEMEDY,  -  59 
INDICATIONS  OF  YELLOWS  IN  THE  PEACH,  -  65 
PEACH  BORER,  ETC..  -74 
PRUNING,  •  -  77 
THE  YALUE  OF  PEACH  GROWING,  -  81 
VARIETIES  OF  PEACHES  FOR  CULTIVATION,  86 
EXTRACTS  FROM  PROCEEDINGS  OF  FRUIT 

GROWERS'  CONVENTION,  -  -    89 

INDEX, 95 


ESTABLISHED  1848 

Azores  in  Cultivation, 

GEO.  ACHELIS, 

PROPRIETOR, 
"\Vrest  Chester  9  3?a.9 


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